Hacking Metaphors, Frames and Other Ideas
Update Part of this post was incorporated into an article I wrote with Brian Kelly and Alistair McNaught that appeared in the December issue of Ariadne . As part of that work and feedback from Alistair and Brian, I expanded the final section from a simple list of bullets into a more detailed research programme…
Read more →[caption id="" align="alignright" width="240"] Professor Abhijit Banerjee (Photo credit: kalyan3)[/caption] "We have to use cliches," said professor Abhijit Banerjee at the start of his LSE lecture on Poor Economics . "The world is just too complicated." He continued. "Which is why it is all the more important, we choose the right cliches." [I'm paraphrasing here.]…
Read more →[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300"] Teacher in primary school in northern Laos (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption] Most of us are all too happy to repeat clichés about education to motivate ourselves and others to engage in this liminal ritual of mass socialization. One such phrase is "knowledge is power". It is used to refer not just to…
Read more →George Lakoff is known for saying that "metaphors can kill" and he's not wrong. But in that, metaphors are no different from any other language. The simple amoral imperative "Kill!" will do the job just as nicely. Nor are metaphors any better or worse at obfuscating than any other type of language. But they are…
Read more →I never meant to listen to this LSE debate on modern atheism because I'm bored of all the endless moralistic twaddle on both sides but it came on on my MP3 player and before I knew it, I was interested enough not to skip it. Not that it provided any Earth-shattering new insights but on…
Read more →Given how long I've been studying metaphor (at least since 1991 when I first encountered Lakoff and Johnson's work and full on since 2000) it is amazing that I have yet to attend a RaAM (Researching and Applying Metaphor) conference. I had an abstract accepted to one of the previous RaAMs but couldn't go. This…
Read more →Jim Shimabukuro uses Rupert Murdoch's quote “We have a 21st century economy with a 19th century education system” to pose a question of what should 21st Century Education look like ( http://etcjournal.com/2008/11/03/174/ ) "what are the key elements for an effective 21st century model for schools and colleges?". However, what he is essentially asking us…
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