Using Figurative Language

Abstract

In the last chapter, a key point was that studying metaphor was more than looking at an attractive but unusual use of language. For this study such figures of speech are interesting because of what they reveal about the thought processes that produce them. The processes revealed by figurative language allow us to conceptualise abstract meaning. Abstraction begins as a figure of speech but becomes an accepted convention of language. At first sight, therefore, it might seem perverse to begin our study of the pedagogical interest of this idea by returning to the rarer figures of speech that reveal how we engage in the ubiquitous process of abstraction. I am going to postpone my look at the larger role of metaphor and think instead about how we can help students to attain a better and more confident control of figurative language and idiom. There are three reasons to do this.