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Metaphor: The Key to Communicating with Both Specialists and the Public

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Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Graduate Studies Division (GSD) Technical Session 3: Mentorship and Communication in Engineering Graduate Programs

Tagged Division

Graduate Studies Division (GSD)

Page Count

15

DOI

10.18260/1-2--43634

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/43634

Download Count

410

Paper Authors

biography

Amanda Dawn Hilliard The Johns Hopkins University

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Amanda Hilliard received her MA in Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language and PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Birmingham in the UK. She has taught writing and communication courses abroad in South Korea, Vietnam, and Ecuador, and in the U.S. in Georgia, Texas, Arizona, and Maryland. She currently teaches in the Center for Leadership Education at the Johns Hopkins University.

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Abstract

While metaphor is vital to the development and spread of scientific knowledge, engineers may overlook the critical role of metaphor in communicating their research to both specialist and non-specialist audiences. Therefore, this study investigated how graduate-level engineering students employed metaphor in both academic journal articles and scientific magazine articles. In a writing and communication course, 14 graduate-level engineering students read an article about metaphor in science, received a lesson on conceptual metaphor theory, and analyzed metaphor in articles from The Best Science and Nature Writing. Finally, the students wrote both an academic article for a specific journal in their fields and a scientific magazine article for a wider audience, which were then analyzed for metaphor frequency, conceptual metaphor, conventional metaphor, creative metaphor, personification, metaphor signaling, extended metaphor, and visual metaphor. Overall, students used a similar amount of metaphor in both articles, but seemed to appeal to different audiences by employing more conventional metaphor and visual metaphor in the journal articles and more extended and creative metaphor in the magazine articles. Although metaphor is only one of many tools to explain complex scientific concepts, the findings suggest engineering students may appreciate metaphor more if we point out how metaphors are used in fixed expressions in scientific fields, how metaphors help scientists process abstract information, or how metaphors can translate scientific research for the public. Moreover, this study emphasizes the need for writing and communication classes that target multiple audiences as an integral part of any graduate-level engineering curriculum.

Hilliard, A. D. (2023, June), Metaphor: The Key to Communicating with Both Specialists and the Public Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43634

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