MED Magazine – The Metaphor Observatory

MED Magazine - Issue 54 - August 2009

MED Web Watch
by Mairi MacDonald

Next in a series of short articles looking at web resources useful for teachers and learners of English. As a rough guide, each site is marked out of 25 in terms of content, design and ease-of-use.

The Metaphor Observatory
www.metaphorobservatory.com/

Bailout, toxic assets, troop surge, mortgage meltdown - these are just some of the terms documented by the Metaphor Observatory, a site which bills itself as being ‘where living metaphor is explained to death’; as you might guess from the name, it watches out for metaphors in the media and analyzes their subsequent evolution.

The Metaphor Observatory is a blog and the articles are simply listed on the home page. Older articles are accessed via links in the left hand margin, either through the Blog Archive, the Most Popular Posts section or by clicking on a keyword in the Labels section. A good place to start is the Top Ten Metaphors list. The Metaphor Observatory has been blogging since 2005 and there's a list for every year of its existence.

The Metaphor Observatory is based in Canada and as such is North American in focus, but many of the topics covered are global and relate to metaphors that crop up in the UK press as well. The material is topical and regularly updated, while the articles themselves are entertaining to read. The content is detailed and well-sourced, with links to original newspapers and websites.

The site is aimed at native speakers and the blog will be challenging for all but the most advanced students. However with a little guidance, the articles are a great source for looking at the concept of metaphor in general. For learners there's a useful link in the left margin to a site which covers the basics of metaphor. Even if certain phrases are too specific for general usage, the blogger's own metaphor-rich style of writing gives plenty of material for discussion. For example how many metaphors are there in the following extract from the site:

We at the Observatory felt fulfilled filing our own description of the crisis, ‘economic souffle’: in our insatiable appetite for consumption, we relied on a few bad eggs who whipped up a delicate dish of an economy; one which is mostly hot air, and one in which the slightest shock would leave us deflated, hungry and angry. Observatory kitchen staff even cooked up our own saucy description of the current economy: ‘Smokin'!’.

Simply printing off an article and getting students to underline any metaphors they spot could provide a good starting point for a lesson on metaphor.

While you wouldn't encourage your students to be mixing their metaphors, and many phrases adopted by the press ultimately descend into cliché, this site offers a fascinating and highly instructive look at the way current issues and world events shape our language.

Score
current and archived content
up-to-dateness/topicality
graphic design and navigation
speed and technical performance
features and functionality
overall score	18 out of 25