ABSTRACT
The analysis of metaphors has been providing an increasingly popular tool of international political analysis since the early 1990s (e.g. Chilton and Ilyin 1993; Lakoff 1993; Chilton and Lakoff 1995; Musolff 1995; Schäffner 1995; Chilton 1996; Milliken 1996; Hülsse 2003; Beer and De Landtsheer 2004; Luoma-aho 2004; Drulák 2006a). However, as Hülsse (2003: 43-8) convincingly argues, the metaphorical study of international politics remains underdeveloped methodologically. This is connected with the fact that analysis of metaphors, as a part of discourse oriented approaches, has been mainly practised by interpretivist students of international politics who tend to be sceptical about the positivist emphasis on the use of well-defined methodology as a guarantee for gaining objective knowledge. This scepticism was beneficial to the extent that it undermined the positivist obsession with quantitative methods; however, it was detrimental to the extent that it discouraged a deeper methodological debate among interpretivists. This weakness has recently been acknowledged and a more rigorous methodological underpinning of political discourse analysis has been called for (Milliken 2001).
