I’m in the unusual position of not having finished my Postgraduate Research Scheme yet, which makes the whole ‘reflecting on the experience’ thing feel strangely anticlimactic. I haven’t finished the scheme yet because we needed native English-speaking university students to take part in our study – a rare animal outside of term time. Hell, it’s difficult enough tempting students out of their warm beds and into our cold, clinical laboratory during term time (it’s not that bad, really), no matter how many Amazon vouchers and chocolate chip muffins we try to bribe them with. But working on Professor Jeannette Littlemore’s project ‘Exploring different types of creativity in metaphor’ has already been a fun and rewarding project to be involved in, even if we haven’t got on with the real nitty-gritty yet.
Amongst other things, I’ve improved my intellectual athleticism jumping through the many hoops that GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] has thrown at us regarding participant confidentiality, inventing a method of participants constructing their own unique five-digit code number in lieu of providing us with their actual name. I’ve also helped develop new materials for the project based on reservations that Professor Littlemore and her team expressed, and I’ve co-authored a debriefing form for participants to read after completing the study. To give you a short summary of the research we’re conducting, the debriefing form goes like this:
“The study you have just taken part in was investigating the different ways in which people respond to different types of metaphors.
Metaphors involve speaking about one thing as if it were another, as in the phrase “He constructed a theory”, where the ‘theory’ is described as a building being constructed. This particular metaphor is conventional because theories are often described as buildings (e.g., “The theory needs to be buttressed”).
Other metaphors are less conventional. For example, someone could say, “He constructed a theory with steel girders”. This metaphor still describes the theory as a building, but adds uncommon detail by specifying that the building is constructed “with steel girders”. This implies that the theory is strong and robust.
Finally, some metaphors are completely novel, as in the phrase “His theory is purple”. This metaphor could be interpreted as meaning that the theory combines ideas from two other theories, just as purple is a mix of red and blue. However, this is not a metaphor we usually use to talk about theories.
This study investigated two main research questions:
- Which type of metaphor will participants find the most difficult to understand?
- Which type of metaphor will elicit the most varied explanations from participants?”
So far, I’ve dived down deep into the existential dread-inducing rabbit hole of ‘But what is a metaphor?’ and I’ve come out on the other side. Now, I’m about to enter the new term with renewed enthusiasm and a metaphorical fire in my belly, ready to finally get this study underway. Wish me luck.
Greg Woodin, MA by Research, English Language + Applied Linguistics