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Metaphor and Political Knowledge*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Eugene F. Miller
Eugene F. Miller*
Affiliation:
University of Georgia
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Abstract

Since the language of political inquiry seems to be inescapably metaphorical, the question necessarily arises as to how metaphors of various types, including models, enter into the composition and expression of political knowledge. The solutions that have been most influential in contemporary political science can be called the verificationist and constitutivist views of political metaphor. While both views contain important elements of truth, there are fundamental difficulties in each that require the search for a more satisfactory view. An alternative view of metaphor and political knowledge is developed by reference to four main problems: Why is political speech metaphorical? How do metaphors make political things manifest? How are political metaphors tested? and Are metaphors indispensable to political expression and political knowledge?

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 73 , Issue 1 , March 1979 , pp. 155 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1979

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Footnotes

*

These reflections on metaphor grow out of lectures delivered in 1974 at Loyola University of Chicago on “The Problem of Political Knowledge.” I am grateful to Professor Richard S. Hartigan, Director of the Loyola Lectures in Political Analysis, for his help and encouragement. My continuing investigation of the problem of political knowledge has been supported at various stages by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Earhart Foundation as well as by my own department. It has received encouragement also from many colleagues and friends, and I wish to dedicate this essay to the memory of two of them–Martin Diamond and Herbert Storing.

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