ABSTRACT
If we compare metaphors with definitions and slogans, some contrasts are immediately apparent. Metaphors are not normally intended to express the meanings of terms used, either in standard or in stipulated ways. Rather, they point to what are conceived to be significant parallels, analogies, or similarities within the subject-matter of the discourse itself. Metaphorical statements often express significant and surprising truths, unlike stipulations, which express no truths at all, and unlike descriptive definitions, which normally fail to surprise. Although they frequently, like programmatic definitions, convey programs, metaphors do so always by suggesting some objective analogy, purporting to state truths discovered in the phenomena before us. Like slogans in being unsystematic and lacking a standard form of expression, they nevertheless have a much more serious theoretical role. They cannot generally be considered as mere fragments crystallizing the key attitudes of some social movement, or symbolizing explicit parent doctrines. Rather, they figure in serious theoretical statements themselves, as fundamental components.
