Metaphor Analysis in Second/Foreign Language Instruction: A Sociocultural Perspective.

This paper reviews the use of metaphor analysis as a research tool in education, specifically second or foreign language (L2/FL) education, recommending the application of sociocultural theory as a coherent framework to explain how L2/FL teachers construct metaphorical conceptualizations of their profession. It presents examples from a study supporting the view of metaphor as a socially grounded cognitive tool mediating the way English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers speak and think about their field. The study examined the extent to which teachers appropriated metaphors and used them for constructing their own personal belief systems. Teachers read the prompt, "An ESL teacher is like..." then wrote an original metaphor that best represented how they saw themselves as ESL teachers, also identifying assumptions and theories underlying the metaphors. Results revealed a complex process of appropriation and transformation, whereby the conventional metaphors of the group were adopted in a largely intact fashion, but with varying underlying conceptualizations reflecting differences in individual mappings across conceptual domains and in the influence of both multiple social voices and personal teaching experience. The paper recommends the use of metaphor as a tool to increase self-reflection among L2/FL teachers. Appendix includes table of conceptual metaphors, exemplar metaphors, and examines defining what "an ESL teacher is like." (Contains 44 references.) (SM)