The Violence of Free Speech and Press Metaphors

83 Pages Posted: 4 May 2023 Last revised: 1 May 2024

See all articles by Erin Carroll

Erin Carroll

Georgetown University Law Center

Date Written: May 1, 2023

Abstract

Today, our free speech marketplace is often overwhelming, confusing, and even dangerous. Threats, misdirection, and lies abound. Online firestorms lead to offline violence. This Article argues that the way we conceptualize free speech and the free press are partly to blame: our metaphors are hurting us. The primary metaphor courts have used for a century to describe free speech—the marketplace of ideas—has been linked to violence since its inception. Originating in a case about espionage and revolution, in a dissent written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, a thrice-injured Civil War veteran, the marketplace has been described as a space where competition and force order the rungs on a ladder climbing toward truth. Power and violence are at home in the speech marketplace. Unsurprisingly, these same characteristics animate the defining metaphor for a key free speech institution: the press is a “watchdog.” In First Amendment law, the press’s role is to attack government for its misdeeds. As linguists have shown, metaphors are not simply rhetorical icing. They shape human understanding and behavior—sometimes in dangerous ways. The marketplace and watchdog metaphors have this power, and with it they have helped to create a speech environment where violence can feel routine. No easy fix exists for the violence in our public sphere. But new metaphors could help us reconceptualize the ways we communicate. This Article offers up two sets of metaphors--forest metaphors and universe metaphors--and test drives them in potential cases involving the press.

Keywords: First Amendment, press, metaphor

JEL Classification: K00, K30

Suggested Citation

Carroll, Erin, The Violence of Free Speech and Press Metaphors (May 1, 2023). Washington and Lee Law Review, Vol. 81, Issue 1, Pp. 87-168. , Georgetown University Law Center Research Paper No. 2023/02, (2024). Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works. 2498., Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4434099

Erin Carroll (Contact Author)

Georgetown University Law Center ( email )

600 New Jersey Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001
United States

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
152
Abstract Views
692
Rank
369,422
PlumX Metrics