MetaphorIC

Interactive tools to expand your knowledge of metaphor in the English language.

The ‘Metaphor in the Curriculum’ app provides interactive tools to help to increase your knowledge of metaphor in the English language. There are two major components to the app: metaphor quizzes and a version of the Metaphor Map of English. The app can be used alongside the Metaphor in the Curriculum website, which contains teaching materials for secondary schools and online access to the features of the app.

The metaphor quizzes are designed to help users to recognise and understand the mental connections that are being made when we use metaphors. They ask the user to identify the area of meaning that the metaphorical word has come from, and the area of meaning to which that vocabulary has been transferred (e.g. ‘a bright child’ uses the word bright, which has been transferred from the area of LIGHT into the area of INTELLIGENCE).

The Metaphor Map of English shows the metaphorical links which have been identified between different areas of meaning. These links can be accessed through three different tools: browse, search or the Metaphor Map visualisation. They can be viewed as tables, metaphor cards, visual links or timelines. The metaphorical links can be from the Anglo-Saxon period right up to the present day so the map covers 1300 years of the English language. This allows us to track metaphorical ways of thinking and expressing ourselves over more than a millennium.