How Dirty is Dirty Money in English and Lithuanian? Metaphors in EU Directives on Some Criminal Matters: a Cross-linguistic Analysis

Abstract

The paper sets out to examine metaphors in some EU documents on criminal activities. Drawing on contemporary understanding of metaphor, the investigation attempts to identify the main source domains for conceptualising a broadly understood abstract concept of law and to identify linguistic metaphors realising such conceptualisation. It also tackles the problem of translating metaphors into Lithuanian. The results of the study demonstrate preference given to object and person metaphors, which confirms previously identified tendencies of metaphoricity in legal discourse. In addition, the metaphor law/control is up features rather prominently. The latter is also the one that is not preserved in translation: differently from the above metaphors, in Lithuanian it is either rendered non-metaphorically or employing