1 Politics and metaphor – a discourse theoretical analysis Allan Dreyer Hansen Dept. of Social Science, Roskilde University, Denmark. Paper to be presented at ECPR conference 2005, Granada. Workshop on metaphors. Draft version - please don’t quote… Introduction Metaphors not only permeates politics but political analysis as well: Left – right, up – down etc. are not only words used within political fields but are commonly employed as concepts in scientific analysis. The literature on rhetoric and politics is blooming and there seem to be a growing awareness across the discipline of the working of metaphors in politics. An obvious example of the use of metaphors is the recent debate on ‘networks in the shadow of hierarchy’. As Lakoff and Johnson (2003) fairly quickly would notice, all the parts of this concept – ‘networks’ ‘in the shadow of’ ‘hierarchy’ - is metaphorical. ‘In the shadow’ is obviously metaphorical, what they call ‘metaphorical extension in new directions’, but also networks and hierarchy are metaphors, what they call ‘literal expressions structured by metaphorical concepts’ (Lakoff and Johnson 2003: 51 and 53). Reflecting on the Swedish ‘Account of Power’ Petersson wrote a book on ‘Power of metaphors’ (Petersson 1987), arguing convincingly not only the spread of metaphors in politics, but also the power games stemming from use of metaphors. According to the very opening line of the book, ‘language is the tool of politics’. Petersson wanted to show not only to what extent political