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Abstract
Rhetorical and communication scholars have long asserted the significance of analogy in persuasion. A variety of persuasive roles have been stipulated for analogies. These accounts are inconsistent, so individual explanations are either inaccurate or incomplete. This essay aims to refine understandings of analogy by reviewing, critiquing, and synthesizing several classical and contemporary rhetorical analyses, a cognitive model of analogy processing, and dual‐process theories of persuasion. The synthesis, which is presented in an integrated set of propositions, offers a systematic view of the potential suasory roles of explanatory and expressive analogies. Suggestions for testing the propositions are discussed as well.