A Corpus-Based Analysis of Metaphors in the Judgements of the Supreme Court of Pakistan

Abstract

This paper explores the frequency and types of metaphors in the judgments of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. For this purpose, a specialized corpus, Corpus of Legal Discourse in Pakistan (COLD), was built from the selected judgements of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Subsequently, COLD was analyzed for metaphor identification using a triangulation of techniques including those applied by Charteris-Black (2004), MIP (Metaphor Identification Procedure) by Pragglejaz Group (2007) and MIPVU (a modified version of MIP developed at Vrije Universiteit) by Steen et al. (2010). The method involved both quantitative and qualitative analyses to determine the frequency and types of metaphors in COLD. As a result, it was found that 13.60% of COLD consisted of metaphors, with prepositions making the dominant word class of all metaphorically used words, followed by verbs and nouns. The prominent source domains identified in COLD included ‘physical objects’, ‘space’, ‘humans’ and ‘journeys’, along with several other minor domains. Several of the findings are consistent with previous research on the topic.