Using tenor, vehicle and ground to analyse metaphors
It's vanishingly rare to encounter a student in secondary school who doesn't know what a metaphor is. That said, it's equally rare to find students who are able to define what a metaphor actually is. When pressed, they tend to say things like, "It when to say something is something else," or "It's saying something is something it isn't," or, even more commonly, "I know what it is but I don't know how to explain it." Does any of this matter? After all, if students can spot a metaphor - and they usually can - why do they need to [...]