Hybris Legal Meaning

This article focuses on two legal languages, such as Euro English developed by the institutions of the European Union and Mainland Chinese legal Chinese, in order to examine whether the mental representations and embodied simulation created by conceptual metaphors for the same Western concept, on the right, differ significantly. By analyzing the data contained in two large corpora, this study revealed that despite the common origin of the term directly in both legal languages, they conceptualize it in a significantly different way. Finally, the results of this study are read through the theoretical framework proposed for this special issue – Hybridity and the Third Space. While it is quite easy to think of Euro-English as a hybrid language due to the multilingual and supranational environment in which it is used, this study found that Chinese legal language is also a hybrid language that has linguistic characteristics that overlap different belief systems. Second, when it comes to Quanli`s search for metaphorical collocations, the strongest is baohu (保护 `protect`), with a logDice of 9.17.Footnote 8 The word has a primary meaning “do your best to be careful and prevent it from being damaged”. (`Baohu` – XHC; my own translation and emphasis). A search for baohu fusions in a large separate corpus (13.5 billion words) of non-specialized Chinese, zhTenTen17 [80], which is also available via SketchEngine, shows that baohu with various material objects (e.g., Wenwu “relics”, senlin “forests”, shengwu “organisms”) and objectified entities (e.g. huanjing “environment”, maoyi “trade”, xinxi “information”). A primary meaning of baohu is then “protection of an object”, which is more concrete and less vague than the abstract meaning that the word has when it occurs with the knot, as in On the first question, if the mental representations of law as revealed by the metaphors are the same in the EU institutions and in mainland China, Comparing Table 1 with Table 2 in light of the discussion above, it appears that the mental representations created in the two languages differ in many ways – both quantitatively and qualitatively. First, from a quantitative point of view, the number of linguistic and conceptual metaphors found by my corpus search for law is higher in Euro-English than in legal Chinese.

In fact, European English uses seventeen linguistic metaphors to make six conceptual metaphors, while Legal Chinese uses three linguistic metaphors to realize half (i.e. three) of the conceptual metaphors instantiated in Euro-English. If we consider the etymological meanings of the analyzed words, the metaphor in Euro-English is even higher than in legal Chinese, since “right(s)” in English realizes more conceptual metaphors and uses more schemas than quanli in legal Chinese. In Euro-English, as presented in my data, right-hand metaphors refer to seven different embodied schemes, whereas in Chinese legal law, less than half (i.e. three) of the schemes used in Euro-English for the same concept are conceptualised. For example, “climbing the career ladder” is a linguistic metaphor that recognizes that the gain of power increases, a complex metaphor that draws inspiration from a meaningful life is a journey, a simpler journey, and the encapsulation of power is at the top. Similarly, ta you le hen da de jinbu (他有了很大的进步 `He has made great progress`, where jinbu `progress` literally means `step forward`) recognizes that progress in life is a distance traveled on a path (cf. [27:25]). This metaphor is also inspired by a useful life is a journey. Although “climbing the corporate ladder” and the Chinese phrase convey different meanings with different goals in different contexts, they suggest that Chinese and English speakers understand life as a journey, that is, life is a journey. In addition, both examples refer to a primary metaphor such that goals are goals. This primary metaphor is very much related to the body: if we want to obtain an object, say a bottle of water, we must physically move towards it and thus understand the object both as a goal and as our goal.

If we had focused our research on life, we would have found a similar conception of it in two linguistic cultures, such as English and Chinese. In this study, I took such an approach to study the right metaphors. Footnote 5 This paper focuses on a typically Western legal concept [30, 943] that has the right to examine whether its metaphors differ significantly in two hybrid legal languages such as Continental Chinese (“Legal Chinese”) and Legal English developed by the European institutions (“Euro-English”). First of all, I contextualize my study in terms of cognitive vision of metaphor and place it in an interlinguistic perspective that benefits from the intervention of translation studies. Second, I explain my data from two linguistic corpora, one for each of the linguistic varieties analyzed, and the method of investigation and show how metaphors can be compared between languages. Third, I show and compare the legal metaphors found in Euro-English with those found in Legal Chinese. Finally, I discuss the results of this study and relate them to the subject of this special issue – hybridity and the third space in legal translation. We can now examine the above findings to answer the second question, whether hybrid languages are indeed “system-related” or “worthless,” and relate them more generally to the focal points of this special issue – hybridity and the third space in legal translation.

I now turn to the illustration and discussion of the metaphorical collolocations of the “right(s)” and quanli nodes, which I found in the two languages studied, Euro English and Legal Chinese. In the analysis, I also looked at the etymological meanings of the knots to see if they left traces in contemporary varieties of the language. I will start with the Euro-English legal metaphors. As for -li, the second component of the word quanli, since its first appearance on oracle bones (around the 2nd millennium BC). AD), it has been used to mean “advantageous, profitable”, mainly in a negative sense (see for example [65]. Its use was not metaphorical, as there was no semantic tension between its meanings. The original meaning of “grain harvest”, which can be estimated by observing the components that make up the character for -li (利, formed by 禾 `grain` + 刂 `knife` = `cutting grain` and taking advantage) has long been lost and has no trace in modern or pre-modern Chinese. Some of the metaphors used to create and apply legal concepts in court may be the same in different languages and cultures (which I see as a continuum fueled by Hagar`s notion of linguistic culture; [2]). For example, in English, the word “binding” has a literal meaning of “to tie up”, which is used metaphorically in the legal context (for example, a binding agreement). Similarly, in Chinese, a disyllable word yueshu (约束) is used to say the same thing, with both components literally meaning “to bind”. However, other metaphors may be more culture-specific or misrepresented in other linguistic cultures if they are not lacking.

Translation can be a way to force the importation of metaphors from one linguistic culture to another. In this context, it should be noted that the legal process of transferring legal concepts from one legal system to another necessarily requires translation. So you can physically train every part of their body to make them stronger and more powerful, and you can metaphorically do the same with their rights to make them stronger in court.