I received several questions about the use of metaphors throughout this course.
A metaphor is a figure of speech, when we describe something by calling it something else.
So it’s an implicit comparison.
If I call an enterprise a ‘sinking ship’ everyone will know it’s doomed to fail.
If parents call their kid’s room a pig sty, they think it is a huge mess LIKE a pig sty.
If they would actually say “your room is so dirty, it looks LIKE a pig sty’,
that would officially be a simile,
an explicit comparison, not a metaphor, which is as I said, implicit.
Quite some metaphors have passed in these last weeks:
fourth estate, hypodermic needle, the media agenda, to name just a few.
'Why do scientists do this?' asked one student, 'It seems a bit strange to me...
...that people who are trained in only talking about facts and things they can prove,
use all of these colorful expressions'.
And indeed we do, they are in fact quite important in scientific and
non-scientific discussions about our field.
That is why this is the first question I want to cover: metaphors, why do scholars use them?
Well, the answer to this is quite simple really:
because they are such a powerful communication device.
Metaphors contain a wealth of information, that most people immediately grasp,
all buried beneath a simple concept.
A good metaphor has a high level of shared connotation,
in other words, most people will have the same associations.
Most will understand that the hypodermic needle theory has this name
because it refers to directly injected messages
that have an immediate effect. That the audience has no defense for it.
All of this associated meaning automatically pops up
when you think about a hypodermic needle.
Therefore metaphors are well-suited to discuss complicated issues.
And … using metaphors saves a lot of time.
Probably most people will understand what you mean with a metaphor intuitively
and without further explanation.
So, if you are arguing a greater point and don’t want to pause to explain each step on the way,
metaphors are a useful tool.
If I compare the audience of a message to a group a spoon-fed babies,
then everyone will understand that I don’t mean that audience members are new to this world,
or that they are regarding this world with curious ever-learning eyes.
No, I am saying that the audience is not active, and not blocking information,
and not selecting channels or content, and all experiencing communication,
their food which is fed to them, in the same way.
If you think about it, a lot was communicated implicitly when I used this metaphor.
And it took a lot more time to explain it.
That’s exactly the reason why we use metaphors in science.
This is all a bit abstract of course. So in the next unit I want to discuss some actual
metaphors that we use in our field.
And you will see how much information one metaphor actually contains.