Week 3 Blog #1: Metaphors

The class lecture starts off talking about metaphors. It really opened my eyes because I didn’t realize that majority of us use metaphors almost on a daily basis. The example given of a metaphor for love comparing it to a journey, or a patient, or insanity made me think about how many times I’ve used a metaphor to explain or relate something to someone else. The lecture goes to say that “conduit metaphor suggests that successful communication is easy and effortless,” we just have to use more simple terms. This reminded me of being in the Army and talking to people who spoke different languages. There were words that had meanings the English language didn’t have words to describe. The foreign word had this impactful and strong meaning in its own language that I just wasn’t able to fully understand because there weren’t the right English words to convey such a meaning. I think that we run into problems like this in everyday life with people who don’t understand certain communication concepts. We try to help by relating the concepts to them in a way that they would understand better, but in the process we lose some of the significance. Metaphors are a good and helpful tools, but as the lecture says, “we just have to find the right words for our ideas.”