Metaphors in the Language Classroom: What AI Doesn't Understand

Do you feel like time goes by really fast? Of course you do. But can time go by the same way you go by a street? And can a machine be intelligent the same way you are? Of course not. Those expressions are just metaphors. And yet, humans constantly need to use them. Phrases like time flies or concepts like the well-known artificial intelligence.

If you're a language teacher, you probably pay a lot of attention to metaphors. But maybe not enough. Why? Because attention isn't really something you can pay. Had you noticed that metaphor? You can pay your bills, pay the rent, or pay for a coffee. But attention is an abstract concept, and therefore it can't really be paid.

According to linguists Lakoff and Johnson, metaphors construct the way we think. This theory is known as Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). According to it, beyond saying one thing in terms of another, humans think one thing in terms of another.

Metaphors help us understand reality and, at the same time, show us that reality can't be understood in a single way. That each person draws their own version of reality as best they can, as they know how, or as they want to. In other words: metaphors CONSTRUCT our reality, they don't just try to describe it.

What is a metaphor?

According to Merriam-Webster: "a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them." In other words, a metaphor is a comparison between two things that aren't otherwise related. For example, if as a language teacher you sometimes feel that your student Laura has her head in the clouds, what you really mean is that she's distracted, off in her own world. We associate clouds with a far-away place, away from the ground, away from the reality of the classroom. That's why it's so easy to explain how we notice Laura when she's not listening to what we say in class.

The purpose of metaphors is to communicate, to find other ways of explaining concepts that would otherwise be almost impossible to handle. Concepts like time, life, memory… They slip away from us. We need to create meanings that go beyond the words themselves, because words tend to fall short.

Do metaphors help us learn a language? And teach one?

Metaphors exist in every language that has ever been studied on this planet, and they are a fundamental cognitive tool that allows humans to communicate, to disagree, to understand each other. And precisely for that reason, they are an incredibly powerful tool for learning a language.

Imagine you draw a wavy line on your whiteboard (whether physical or on Zoom) while telling your student that it represents "I was sleeping", and that "the doorbell rang" is a cross on that wavy line. That drawing is itself a metaphor, because we understand time passing as a line (and if it's wavy, it suggests something "in motion"). And we understand a specific action that interrupts that other action as a cross.

In reality, none of those verbs are literally a line, but that seemingly simple drawing helps your student grasp the combination of one action in progress and another that isn't. If you teach English, this simple drawing has probably helped you a thousand times to explain to your students the combination [past continuous + past simple]: I was sleeping when the doorbell rang.

The most powerful thing about metaphors is that all humans use them constantly. It's just a matter of finding the ones that work in your class, with your students, and being willing to flip them around as many times as needed.

Metaphors are anchored in bodily experience and activate more neural areas than a plain rule. That's why a well-used metaphor is sometimes remembered for a lifetime, while a decontextualized rule is forgotten in a few hours. Lakoff and Johnson called this embodied cognition. The theory of embodied cognition holds that human cognition is deeply rooted in sensorimotor processing. That is, in the way our bodies, interacting with the environment, generate meaning, thoughts, and feelings.

Why do metaphors set us apart from AI?

Because AI doesn't understand complex metaphors. It doesn't grasp intentions, nor ideological cause-and-effect. AI can't calculate (or even intuit) the danger of an amplified stereotype. AI doesn't understand human reality. And no matter how much context we give it, AI can't compute the full context of our humanity, precisely because the nuances of being human can't be transferred into words with exactness. Humans aren't exact, aren't predictable, and don't follow logical patterns. We know we don't.

We'd like to think we do: that we're perfectly rational, and when we make mistakes it's simply a miscalculation. But we know that's not true. Impulse purchases, nonsensical trends, and what we're capable of doing when we fall in love are proof of it, along with countless other examples.

AI can help us, can speed us up, can answer us. But it CAN'T understand us, even if sometimes it seems like it can, because it always agrees with us. And of course we must be right, with how intelligent we are!

How to use metaphors in the language classroom

By now, you've probably turned over in your head all the metaphors you use every day. You use metaphors for everything, and of course your language classroom is no exception. Regardless of your students' level, there's always room to bring metaphors in.

Here are four strategies you can use to bring metaphors into your language class:

1. Connect with space so the explanation stays in memory

"Tripping over the same stone", or "being under pressure". Before commenting on the meaning of a set of words, ask yourself: what spatial image can I give my student? If the image relates somehow to space or to your student's own body, they're more likely to remember its meaning. Remember the power of embodied cognition.

2. Look at every word: there might be a hidden metaphor

The language you teach is full of metaphors that no one sees anymore. Does your student know that "I'm going to call you" is a metaphor? English talks about the future as if it was a journey we travel through with our body. And yet, we also say "the exam is coming", as if it was time moving towards us instead.

These simple phrases reveal two different perspectives of the same metaphor coexisting within one language: time is movement. We've internalized them so deeply that we don't realize that, literally, time can't move, because it's not a concrete concept, but an abstract one. When you teach this kind of hidden metaphor to your student, you're showing them a system of thought, a way of understanding reality.

You're also turning on their curiosity, because it's fascinating to discover hidden meanings in word combinations we use every day. Grammar becomes a map, something more visual. Rules still have a place, of course. But if you first create an image in your student's mind… those rules will stay and live there.

3. Adapt your metaphors to your students' context

A metaphor about cars and speed works great with your student Frank, who's passionate about Formula 1, but says little to Patry, who is a programmer and anime fan. For her, computing metaphors might land much better (and there are plenty of those!).

The key for any comparison or metaphor to land is knowing your students. What do they usually think about? Are they more visual or more auditory learners? What catches their attention? What are they interested in?

In general, the more you know your students, the more effective your classes will be. The more you adapt to what they need, the more attention they'll pay you. That's a golden rule. (Yes, that "golden rule" thing is also a metaphor.)

4. Compare metaphors with your students' native language

As we've been saying, metaphors happen in every language. Ask your students how they would say what you're saying. Ask them whether, in their language, up means happy ("feeling up", "lifting your spirits") and down means sad ("feeling down", "down in the dumps"). Turn them into poets in an instant with the questions: Where does joy live? And where does sadness live?

The more they think about their own language, the more space they'll have to think about the one you're teaching them. The more they compare the new language with their native one, the more curious they'll become. The similarities are endless, and the differences make great material for class discussion.

Wrapping up

Metaphors construct our reality and help us deal with abstract concepts as if they were concrete ones. You can (and should) bring metaphors into your language classroom, using the following four strategies:

• Connect with space so the explanation stays in memory
• Look at every word: there might be a hidden metaphor
• Adapt your metaphors to your students' context
• Compare metaphors with your students' native language

By the way, the saying that time flies has been around for more than 2,000 years. Let's not blame modern life for the vertigo we feel watching the days go by. In ancient Rome, Virgil had already warned us with his poem:

«Sed fugit interea, fugit irreperabile tempus»
('but meanwhile it flees, time flees irretrievably').

We work very hard to think of ourselves as modern beings, but the truth is that human problems haven't changed much since the dawn of our species. What changes is the context and the tools we have available, but the problems are practically identical. Even in ancient Rome, people were already wrestling with time management.

If you're a language teacher, you probably feel short on time. And class time probably flies by, but the time you spend filling in a spreadsheet to figure out how many hours you've taught each student… that feels endless. What a coincidence!