Lanteri, Alessandro and Yalcintas, Altug (2006): The Economics of Rhetoric: On Metaphors as Institutions. Published in: Ankara University GETA Working Papers No. 94 (April 2006)
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Abstract
The professional life of economists takes place within the boundaries of the institution of academic economics. Belonging to the institution enable economists in many ways. It provides a context wherein their contribution is meaningful. But it constrains, too, what economists are allowed to do or say. Thus, institutions both enable and constrain individual action. Metaphors do the same and are therefore, in this respect, institutions. They are place-holders to communicate our beliefs, feelings, and thoughts. So far, there is nothing wrong. This may become a problem, however, as Richard Rorty has once said, when the “happenstance of our cultural development [is] that we got stuck so long with place-holders.” In the essay we focus on the enabling and disabling roles of metaphors as institutions in the rhetoric of economics. We argue, from the perspective of economics of rhetoric, that some of the metaphors can lead us to path dependent circumstances where the performance of the metaphors is not as desirable as it was when the metaphors were first introduced. Sometimes certain metaphors undergo exaptation, and are employed with new functions. Altogether, we believe, the tools of institutional economics can be fruitfully employed to study metaphors.
Item Type: | MPRA Paper |
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Original Title: | The Economics of Rhetoric: On Metaphors as Institutions |
Language: | English |
Keywords: | Economics of rhetoric; metaphors as Institutions; path Dependence; exaptation |
Subjects: | B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B5 - Current Heterodox Approaches > B52 - Institutional ; Evolutionary B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B2 - History of Economic Thought since 1925 > B25 - Historical ; Institutional ; Evolutionary ; Austrian B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B4 - Economic Methodology > B41 - Economic Methodology |
Item ID: | 747 |
Depositing User: | Altug Yalcintas |
Date Deposited: | 09 Nov 2006 |
Last Modified: | 27 Sep 2019 14:27 |
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URI: | https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/id/eprint/747 |