Metaphors may be didactic or illustrative devices, models, paradigms, or root images that generate new models.
Borrowing is metaphoric in several ways.
Theories and models from other disciplines may sensitize scholars to questions not usually asked in their own fields, or they may help interpret and explain, whether that means a framework for integrating diverse elements or hypothetical answers that cannot be obtained from existing disciplinary resources. When a research area is incomplete, borrowing may facilitate an inductive open-endedness. It may function as a probe, facilitating understanding and enlightenment. Or, it may provide insight into another system of observational categories and meanings, juxtaposing the familiar with the unfamiliar while exposing similarities and differences between the literal use of the borrowing and a new area. Klein then points that borrowers have been called translators, clarifiers, who interpret one discipline to those in another.