Metaphors in Commercial Contracts Piotr Twardzisz University of Warsaw Abstract. The present paper analyses some non-obvious traces of figurative mechanisms in an instance of language for specific purposes, namely language used in legal contexts. Naturally, the material from the field of legal language has had to be tailored to suit the scope and purpose of this paper. Selected examples of fragments of contract clauses from English legal language have been analysed and several metaphors have been elicited. In a world described by means of legal language, companies are living beings which occasionally may get injured by other living beings. Difficult or problematic situations are like knots which are to be untied. Ideas like rights and duties are physical objects to be carried from one location to another. The proposed study should constitute a contribution to research on the use of figurative language in specialist communication, particularly in its written version. Keywords: figurative language, metaphor, legal language, language for specific purposes (LSP), language for general purposes (LGP). 1 Language for specific purposes The last two decades or so have seen the need for yet another division within linguistics, or applied linguistics, to be more precise. The dichotomy in question is the one between language for general purposes (LGP) and language for specific purposes (LSP). Artificial though the division may be felt, it has become firmly established within applied linguistics. As the present article concerns a further sub-division within LSP, namely legal language, let us briefly review some of the major tenets of the distinction in question, with necessary shortcuts. A somewhat secondary nature of specialist language, in comparison to general language, has been observed, for example, in Lukszyn (2007). According to Grucza (2006: 34), specialist languages ought to be studied as autonomous languages. At the same time he notes that specialist languages are not complete languages, in the