Language, Metaphor, and Analogy in the Music Education Research Process

Abstract

This article is guided by the belief that the purpose of research lies in the discovery of laws by which the workings of the universe may be explained. We describe seemingly disjoint events and phenomena, classify them according to observed recurrences of same events, and then organize them into patterns of causal relationships. From those patterns we formulate theories as to why the events and phenomena may have come about in the first place. We assume our theories to be valid when they allow for the prediction of same or similar phenomena in the future. As the description provides the evidence needed to test the theory, the latter is only as good as the descriptors underlying that theory are meaningful.1 The relationship between evidence and theory formation becomes of particular importance when-as is the case in music education-the nonverbal evidence, musical behavior, requires verbal description. By naming an observed phenomenon, researchers in music education select from their repertoire of words a label that appears to give meaning to the observed phenomenon. We handle the evidence in a way most appropriate to our own understanding of the phenomenon; in a sense, we manipulate that which we do not know.