Paper short abstract:

This presentation conceptualizes analogies as rhetorical devices to explore their framing effects. Applied to the case of public engagement with nanotechnology, this approach elucidates that lay people’s analogies construct a counter-framing to the strategic overpromising of politico-economic actors.

Paper long abstract:

Lay people are increasingly invited to deliberate on the future of emerging technologies such as nanotechnology in public engagement settings. Analogies, especially to familiar technologies, appear frequently in these contexts. Yet, by seeing analogies merely as cognitive-imaginative tools, most studies on lay analogies overlook that sense-making cannot be disentangled from framing and persuading practices. This presentation highlights the problems of cognitivist approaches (e.g. mental models approach, social representations theory) and proposes an alternative conceptualization of analogies as rhetorical, action-oriented devices employed to achieve specific effects. To illustrate this approach, the rhetorical roles of analogies are traced in discussion groups on nanotechnology with members of the Austrian public. Analogies are employed to argue for the acceptance or rejection of nanotechnology, to prevent certain futures from materializing, or to close a topic and counter other arguments. Underlying these different roles is a tension between a techno-optimistic and more techno-critical framing. Most participants use analogies to challenge techno-optimistic scenarios that dominate in politico-economic discourses. Analogies with past "risky" technologies here work to underpin a counter-framing that highlights concerns and encourages policy actors to learn from past governance mistakes. Instead of conceptualizing these two framings as incompatible, I propose to understand the emergence of the techno-critical framing as a "natural" counterbalancing strategy vis-à-vis the strategic overpromising that often accompanies emerging technologies today. Exploring the rhetorical roles of analogies represents a direct route to identify and understand the relations of diverging framings in a broader techno-political context.