Analogy use in naturalistic settings: The influence of audience, emotion, and goals

The ways in which analogy was used in a nonexperimental environment-politic s-was investigated. We used the framework developed in analogy research to analyze the selection of analogical sources in political discourse. We took all the analogies reported in newspapers hiring the final week of a refere ndum campaign in Canada and analyzed the features of the different analogie s used. We identified 234 analogies and analyzed the range over which analo gies were used, semantic categories of analogies, goals of the analogizer, and emotional connotation of the analogies. Our results reveal that analogy was frequently used, that over two-thirds of the analogical sources were n onpolitical, and that many of the sources had strong emotional connotations . Furthermore, the goal of the analogizer influenced the selection of sourc es. We conclude that characteristics of the audience and emotionality of th e source analog are important features in the selection of source analogs.