Sociological figures: Metaphor in the texts of classical sociology.

摘要

This thesis tries to develop an intersection between theories of metaphor and classical sociology. An examination of the writings of Lakoff and Johnson, Paul Ricoeur, and Jacques Derrida helps to develop and understanding of the relation of metaphor to language, thought, and meaning. The guiding framework is taken from Derrida's argument that the classical oppositions between metaphoric and literal language do not hold. This argument creates an opportunity for fruitful re-readings of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber that outline ways of locating the literal/metaphorical problematic in classical sociology. All of these writers, not surprisingly, have made effective use of metaphoric language. In this regard, I have largely focused on the ways that each of them have represented their concepts, or their objects of study, as if they were living, organic entities. In Marx, this turns out mainly to be the commodity. In Durkheim, it is society itself, and in Weber, ideas are represented as if alive. For none of them, however, is this perceived strictly as a matter of metaphor. In Marx's analysis, for example, commodities are the real embodiment of labour, and so, in his view, their appearance as social actors is not really metaphorical, but rather a necessary and real consequence of a certain stage in the mode of production.