Abstract

This dissertation shows how metaphor analysis may be used as an archeological method that takes the speech analyst beyond the surface of talk to disclose the generative density and sedimentation of possible meaning upon which a discourse is constructed. My analysis shows that within the context of the discourse of integrated medicine this method can bring certain semantic properties into view which might otherwise remain obscured or hidden. The method developed here is a critical one, framed in terms of the problem of generativity , which is understood as the process of historical and intersubjective becoming. It involves questioning patterns of identity and difference that occur over the generations. The problem of generativity, originally explored and anticipated by Husserl, has been taken up by Anthony Steinbock and developed in terms of a generative phenomenological method. In this study I combine the historical and intersubjective frame of generative phenomenology with the textual and metaphoric focus developed in Paul Ricoeur's phenomenological hermeneutics. My investigation critically examines, from the standpoint of a participant-observer, 'the rule of metaphor' in the texts of six ethnographic interviews with "alternative" health care practitioners.