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David Rigney's Eight Metaphors Essay

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In Daniel Rigney, Professor Emeritus of sociology at St. Mary's University, and author of The Metaphorical Society: An Invitation to Social Theory (2001) discusses eight metaphors in relation to societies, claiming that these metaphors have formed “... from particular people, in particular places and times, and are inevitably shaped by the interests and the historical circumstances of their makers” (p.6). These eight metaphors include society as a biological system, as a machine, as a war, as a legal order, as a marketplace, as a game, as a theater, and as a discourse.
A metaphor is a comparison technique, or a mode of thought, used to compare two different topics by using the language of another. For example, one common metaphor heard in the United States when referring to the wide varieties of population is “the United States is a melting pot”, which is comparing the population of the United States to a melting pot, which has various “ingredients” that are unique as the population of the United …show more content…

For example, social forces such as being “stressed” or “strained” are example of mechanical terms used to describe a human feeling. Rigney also uses Max Weber’s description of the buracracy as a machine and the idea that the Constitution is a system of checks and balances to further examine the metaphor of society as a machine. However, unlike the metaphor of society as a biological system, society as a machine has the ability to evolve as time goes on. Rigney points out the once used term “works like an assembly line” is becoming out dated and focusing more around computers and other technologies that were not around when the assembly line was first designed. As the assembly line has become obsolete and computers have became more common, new metaphors were

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