Metaphors We Serve By: Critical and Constructive Play with the Discourses on Service, National Service, and Service-Learning

What does it mean to serve? Metaphors We Serve by explores the process of meaning construction and the role of framing metaphors across the history of service, national service, and service-learning in the United States. Book chapters consist of interrelated essays ranging from theoretical and personal perspectives on the complex subject of service, to focused investigations of the key discourses informing national service and service-learning programs. Conceptual metaphor analysis is the chief methodological tool employed throughout. By examining keywords, and through close readings of primary texts, the metaphors we serve by are uncovered and critically examined. Because these conceptual metaphors highlight and hide various meanings of service without ultimately defining it, they permit a kind of semantic playfulness. In his concluding chapters Taylor opens this constructive project by exploring new and creative frames for approaching service. Service program leaders and service-learning educators will find these essays both useful and provocative.

Joby Taylor was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Gabon and his involvement in community service learning has included many projects in the U.S. and internationally. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland Baltimore County in Language Literacy and Culture. Joby lives in Baltimore and is Director of the Shriver Peaceworker Program.