Two Ways to Compare

Abstract

1 Here and in what follows I use “things” in a colloquial, encompassing sense. The term includes not only material objects but also events, actions, processes, practices, experiences and the like. 2 The comparative dimension of metaphor becomes more evident when contrasting metaphoric and literal utterances. The metaphoric “The moon is a piece of cheese” can be reworded as “The moon is like a piece of cheese” and still make sense. The literal “Red is a color,” in contrast, cannot be rendered as “Red is like a color”–such an utterance is nonsensical (Carston 2002, 358). The point is that metaphors can be turned into explicit comparisons whereas literal utterances cannot. This is not to claim that metaphor and simile function identically, but only to call attention to the fact that both involve comparison. For more on the comparative dimension of metaphor, see Perrine (1971). On the differences between metaphor and simile, and the more complicated relationship of metaphor to comparison, see Glucksberg and Haught (2006). In taking up the task of “rethinking comparison in the social sciences,” we might gainfully ask a basic, but not-too-often posed, question: What are the different ways to compare? Or to rephrase the query more precisely: What are the different ways in which we ordinarily use the word “compare”? My aim in posing this question is to bring into clearer view a way of comparing that, despite being both common and integral to the social sciences, often goes unnoticed. By drawing attention to it, I hope to provide social scientists with a set of starting points to think more clearly about the comparisons they make and to expand their imagination about the kinds of comparing that are possible.