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Fireworks and Football Crowds: Metaphor as Theory

In: Metaphor and Dialectic in Managing Diversity

Author

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  • Christina Schwabenland

    (University of Bedfordshire)

Abstract

McIntosh (2010) suggests metaphors communicate in at least three, distinct ways: firstly, metaphors can express ideas which are hard to convey using more literal language, secondly, to present complex information compactly in a way that ‘captures the richness’ succinctly, and thirdly, to ‘transmit some sense of the vividness of an experience’ (McIntosh 2010: 119–120). The metaphor of the patchwork quilt, as described by my student above, demonstrates all three. The metaphor itself is not an unusual one. In 1997 Prasad and Mills commented on the way in which diversity was ‘celebrated’ in textbooks on human resource management and organisational behaviour ‘with the help of evocative metaphors such as the melting pot, the patchwork quilt, the multi-coloured or cultural mosaic and the rainbow’ (Prasad and Mills 1997: 4). But the detail provided in this example and the portrayal of the imaginative processes of the quilt maker’s art function as a rich, complex and very vivid description of managing diversity.

Suggested Citation

  • Christina Schwabenland, 2012. "Fireworks and Football Crowds: Metaphor as Theory," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Metaphor and Dialectic in Managing Diversity, chapter 3, pages 53-77, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-02267-7_3
    DOI: 10.1057/9781137022677_3
    as

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