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Barnhill, Jura. June 2015. (Thanks to the kindness of the Fletcher family).

Using Analogy

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One useful way to assist understanding of a new and unfamiliar subject is to draw a parallel with things that are known, familiar and analogous to illuminate the novel concept.

Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage[1] (4th edition, 2015) says:

“It [i.e. analogy] should properly be used in contexts involving definite comparisons that justify the notion of analogy… In practice, however, it does not always manage to keep its distance from the more general word similar”.

So, using a familiar concept to draw a parallel with a complex notion such as sovereignty can assist an understanding of concepts that can, otherwise, seem elusive.

Analogy can also be used in an academic answer to demonstrate knowledge and understanding to an examiner.

Having mulled over the notion of sovereignty, it seems that there is something of an illustrative affinity between the nature of sovereignty and the characteristics of a river.[2]  A subsequent post will try to unpack the concept of sovereignty using a river by way of analogy.

Given that parliamentary sovereignty subsequently arises as a distinctive type within the wider, pre-existing, notion of sovereignty, it seems eminently sensible to use the very river that washes against the Westminster Parliament where that distinctive form of sovereignty was first to emerge.

Touring London with journalist Blanchard Jerrold in the late 1860s and early 1870s, the artist Gustav  Doré illustrated their joint perspective on the city with a number of pictures including one of Father Thames sitting on the river’s bank with a lion.

Father Thames & Lion

 

Whether or not Doré uses the lion consciously as a symbol of sovereignty the creature has long and often been incorporated into the Royal Coat of Arms in England and Scotland. The Royal Coat of Arms is found in both Parliament and court rooms across the United Kingdom.  The terms of heraldry arguably reflect the role of both court and parliament relative to the concept of sovereignty – in heraldic terminology the lions are said to offer ‘support’.



[1] A useful purchase if you find an unused book token nearing expiry.

[2] Though my account may stray from strict analogy towards the merely similar (as Fowler’s definition warns can happen) it will, hopefully, be of some assistance in illustrating both the idea of analogy and the concept of sovereignty.


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