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