Towards an analysis and classification of approaches to knowledge acquisition from examination of textual metaphor

Abstract

Metaphor is frequently used to describe the abstract aspects of science in scientific fields. Authors' choice of mataphor reflects and affects their thoughts, and through these, their practices in the field. For this reason, we propose that metaphors are appropriate to understanding approaches to knowledge acquisition. Salmond, an anthropologist, provides a methodological model of how metaphor in text can be manually analysed and used to classify the text according to its perspective on the phenomena of study. She picks anthropological references for her application of the method. We expand upon Salmond's method of metaphorical analysis and apply it to key concepts, such as the nature of knowledge, in: (1) text on knowledge acquisition; and (2) text on ethnomethodology, a sociological approach which has recently been applied to knowledge acquisition. For instance, the knowledge acquistion text was found to claim that knowledge is a human construction/tool, while the enthnomethodology text communicated that knowledge is rooted in social activity. We discuss and compare the results of our metaphoric analyses of the knowledge acquistion and ethnomethodology text, as well as those from Salmond's analyses of the anthropological text. We develop Salmond's ideas for classifying approaches and propose a three-part classification scheme: task-, concept- and domain-based. The perspective and application of each classification type are described. We illustrate how to use this classification scheme by classifying the enthnomethodology approach.