 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
|||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
Tips for the classroom Mining
for metaphors An
understanding of the metaphorical links between expressions can be a
powerful learning tool. These activities will give you a helping
hand. Metaphors in everyday use You
may think that metaphor is only used in poetry and creative writing,
but this is not the case. Many words in English have more than one
meaning, and these other meanings are often connected to the main
meaning in metaphorical ways. Most
of the words that we use for describing familiar objects and
familiar experiences also have metaphorical meanings. Groups of
metaphors come from many different areas of human life. Metaphors about the body Some
of the first words that you learn in English are for parts of the
body: hand, head, eye and so on. But
these words are sometimes used in ways that don’t fit the meanings
that you know:
If
you only know the basic meanings of these words, you will find these
sentences strange. Does the first speaker want somebody to cut off
their hand and give it to Jill, together with the boxes? Of course
not. The first speaker is asking for help. The second speaker is
suggesting that everyone should work together in order to solve a
problem. In these sentences, the body parts are being used in ways
that are not literal
but metaphorical. Although
the sentences above do not refer literally to body parts, their
meanings are influenced by literal meanings. We use our hands to
help people, so to help someone is to give
them a hand. Our brains are inside our heads, so the head is
associated with people thinking. We look at something with our eyes,
so if we keep an eye on
something, we watch it carefully to make sure that it is being done
correctly. Activity 1 Here are some definitions and phrases based on the metaphorical use of body parts. Decide which body part is being used in the sentences. The first one has been done for you.
Discussion points 1 We
use metaphors almost every time we think and speak, often without
realizing it. When you read a piece of English, notice the metaphors
and think about the way the metaphorical meanings are connected with
the literal meanings.
a)
Working in pairs, look at the two examples below of the use of the
phrase hand in hand, which we looked at in Activity 1. Which sentence illustrates
the literal meaning of the phrase and which the metaphorical
meaning? How do you think the literal meaning of the phrase can help
you understand and remember the metaphorical one?
b) Working in pairs, write sentences illustrating the literal
meanings of the five other phrases used in Activity 1. Form groups
with another pair and compare sentences. Choose the one sentence
that you think works best in helping you understand and remember the
metaphorical meaning. Read that sentence out to the class and
explain why you chose it. Language awareness Different
languages can use the same or similar metaphors. For example, both
English and Italian use can’t
get it out of my head to mean something you can’t stop
thinking about. But sometimes similar metaphors have very different
meanings. For example, if you say a man has
a big head in English it means he is arrogant. In Italian it
means he is clever.
Discussion points 2 Can
you think of a metaphorical use of body
in your language, which does not appear in the spidergram? For
example, in Italian they use the word body
where in English we use the word corps
as in the diplomatic corps
or a military corps.
Write the word as part of a sentence in your own language and
translate it literally into English. See if the class can up with a
correct way of saying the same thing in English. The
article above is based on ‘Mining for metaphors’, first
published in ‘ELmaterials’, ELGazette,
April 2003. Reproduced by kind permission of ELGazette. |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
)
the metaphorical uses that exist exactly in your language.
)
next to the metaphorical uses which can't be used in your
language.
