Metaphors in Policy
Metaphors are not merely ornamental, they fundamentally shape how we know things. The use of passive language and particular prepositions when discussing womens' offending (see the report 'Women Offenders: A Safer Way'), for example, is the deployment of a metaphor of women as victims. The metaphors used to describe integration of public sector activities, such as 'joined up services and 'breaking out of silos', not only help us understand what is meant by terms like multi-agency work arrangements, but are also making the normative case that such arrangements are the best way of doing things (consider the opposite metaphors of these: fragmented services and working in silos).
I am exploring how these insights from cognitive linguists such as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Donald Schön and metaphor specialists Alice Deignan and Jonathan Charteris Black might enrich our understanding of policy and policy discourse. So far I have looked at the use of metaphors in defining the problem of serious violent and sexual offenders, as well as how the concept of risk management in criminal justice is both explained through metaphors (of machines, building, time and space) and itself might be a metaphor (borrowed from business and financial worlds). I am currently working with Alice Deignan using corpus linguistics and discourse analysis to identify metaphors of payback and punishment in Scottish penal reform.
Project Documents and Resources
- Metaphors in Criminal Justice Policy (powerpoint)
- MACLEAN REPORT
- Wikipedia entry on Conceptual Metaphors
- George Lakoff analysing metaphors and the first and second Iraq invasions
- Managing Meaning: Metaphors in Criminal Justice Policy (2008) (PDF)
- 'Payback and Punishment: Meatphors in Scottish Penal Reform (2010) (Powerpoint) presented to RaAM08, Amsterdam (July 2010) and handout listing references
Project Contacts
All Projects
- A Comparative Analysis of Community Service in Belgium, Holland, Scotland and Spain
- Policing organised crime: effectively measuring performance
- Restorative Practices for Serious Adult Offenders
- 'Holistic' interventions with women involved in the criminal justice system.
- A profile of female offenders within the Lothian and Borders
- A Rapid Evidence Assessment of the Drivers of Perception of Anti-Social Behaviour
- Alcohol Misuse and Domestic Abuse
- All Change
- An investigation into the environmental impact of off-license premises on residential neighbourhoods
- Analysing the Scottish Crime Survey Over Time
- Analysis of Supervision Skills by Juvenile Justice Workers
- AQMeN
- Assessing Dynamic Risk in Intimate Partner Offenders
- Assessing Risk in Intimate Partner Offenders
- Audit of a sample of alcohol outlets in Glasgow
- Building Safer Communities: ESRC Engaging with Scottish Local Authorities initiaitve
- Circles of Support and Accountability
- Collaboration of Researchers for the Effective Development of Offender Supervision (CREDOS)
- Community Policing in Scotland
- Comparing Crime Surveys Across the UK
- Compliance with Community Penalties
- Consensus / Consenso
- Crime and Justice Research Training and Development
- Cultural Change in Community Justice
- Desistance and Reducing Reoffending
- Different Systems, Similar Outcomes? Tracking Attrition in Reported Rape Cases
- Diversion from Prosecution to Social Work
- Drinking and Drug Use in the Community: A Survey of Young Offenders, 2007
- Economics of Crime
- Ethnography of Penal Policy
- Ethnography Reading Group
- European Postgraduate and Early Stage Researchers Working Group
- European Society of Criminology Working Group on Community Sanctions
- Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Home Detention Curfew (HDC) and the Prison's Open Estate
- Evaluation of the Grampian Return Home Welfare Interview (RHWI) pilot
- Evaluation of the National Parenting Development Project Project (NPDP, Aberlour Child Care Trust).
- Evaluation of the Women in Focus Programme
- Evaluation of Up-to-us Young Women’s Project
- Families of Nations and Criminal Justice Outcomes
- Football Banning Orders in Scotland: Evaluating their operation
- Gender Equality Duty and Scottish Criminal Justice - EOC Guidance
- Implicit Thinking in Intimate Partner violence
- Incarceration, social control and human rights.
- Juvenile Justice in New South Wales
- Learning about alcohol: Influences of family context
- Metaphors in Policy
- Organised Crime Mapping Project
- Pathways to Recovery Seminar Series
- Policy Responses to Gender Based Crime in Scotland
- Prison Privatisation
- Probation Histories
- Quality of Engagement in Probation Practice
- Racism and social marginalisation research study
- Reconviction among Drug Court participants
- Reconviction among young people sentenced in the pilot Youth Courts
- Restorative Justice Survey for Criminal Justice Professionals
- SCJS User Guide
- Scoping Study into Quantitative Methods Capacity Building in Scotland
- Scottish Prisons Commission Report
- Services for Young Runaways: A Scoping Study
- Social Enquiry and Sentencing in the Sheriff Courts
- The Governance of Security and the Analysis of Risk for Sporting Mega-events: Security Planning for the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games
- The International Market in Illicit Antiquities
- Understanding the drivers of the female prison population in Scotland
- User Views of Punishment
- Using the Scottish Offenders Index for Research
- Women, Punishment and Community Sanctions - Human Rights and Social Justice
- Working Lunches at Flo House
- Young Women and Violence
- Youth Gangs and Knife Carrying
- Youth Violence in Scotland
