Nouns that Were Verbed in the Olympics - 10 September 2012

Nouns that Were Verbed in the Olympics


Now that both the Olympics and Paralympics are over, reflecting on language used at the events is due. The connection between the Games and the English language is not an obvious one, but some controversy did brew up this year over sports terms such as “medal” and “podium” that are now occasionally used as verbs. However, as Liz Potter of the Macmillan Dictionary blog notes in “They Came, They Medalled, They Podiumed”, the verbing of nouns is not a new phenomenon in the language (nor is resistance to such evolution one might add). In fact, many other nouns, unrelated to the Olympics, have recently become common verbs: to blog, from web log, to friend and unfriend from Facebook features, and to Facebook are just a few examples.

So why are Olympics-related terms so controversial? Possibly because the event is a high profile one with global coverage. The furore over “medal”, which has not only been used as a verb but also as an adjective, as in “the most medalled Olympian”, has been documented by The Guardian newspaper’s style editor, David Marsh, who defended the use in relation to the 2008 Olympics, commenting that it was neither illegal nor immoral, while, for the purists, it was a sign that “the linguistic barbarians are not only at the gates: they have battered their way through, pulled up a chair, helped themselves to a beer and are now undermining our very way of life by rewriting our grammar books to suit their evil purpose” (“Mind Your Language”).

Historically in English, nouns have been verbed, and verbs have been nouned: the process is called conversion. Those who react violently to such verbal variation are simply undermining the linguistic creativity of others, as well as the natural evolution of the language.


Posted by May Mikati on 10 September 2012, 10:57 AM

Metaphors for Teaching - 06 September 2012

Metaphors for Teaching


At the start of a new academic year, what better metaphors to explore than metaphors for teaching? The Annenberg Foundation has surveyed school teachers in the U.S. for metaphors they would use for their work. Dozens emerged, including that of a dolphin riding the waves of the classroom, an actress with many roles to play, an encyclopedia maximizing students’ learning, a detective diagnosing students’ needs, and a farmer planting the seeds of knowledge (“What’s Your Metaphor? Survey Results”). The better metaphors touch upon the diagnostic and formative aspects of teaching, not just summative, end product aspects.

Kim McShane, a university lecturer in Sydney, Australia, has researched metaphors for university teaching, focusing on academic teacher identity in the light of the integration of ICT in teaching. Metaphors for teachers who use technology are different from those used to describe old-fashioned teachers. The facilitator metaphor, that of the “guide on the side”, supplants that of “sage on the stage”. Such teachers are seen as leaders, hosts, managers, mediators, or resources to be consulted. Traditional teachers, on the other hand are seen as authoritarian providers of knowledge: performers and deliverers of content. McShane worries that some of the new metaphors may actually be interpreted as devaluing, or ignoring teachers’ work – and one may or may not agree.

My favourite metaphor is that of the transmission of cultural DNA, comparing cultural propagation to genetic propagation. After all, culture is not just a matter of history or people’s rituals, let alone how they dance or sing; it is about how they react to current issues, including the way they solve problems. Harold McDougall, a law Professor, examined the idea in a recent Huffington Post blog post, “Cultural DNA: Bringing Civic Infrastructure to Life”. His post ends on a particularly relevant note: “As we teach them and send them on their way, we have a responsibility to pass on the tenets of progressive social change as our generation understands them: learn by experience; respect context; encourage participation; honor place; accept limits; and acknowledge temporality. These strands of cultural DNA, traditional and modern, can help us construct a culture of empathy and sustainability that is the proper foundation for progressive social change.”

In their book Metaphors We Live By, Linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson have argued that our minds actually process the world primarily through metaphors and that the way we conceptualize abstract ideas affects the way we understand them. Metaphors define roles. Therefore, those that represent students as passive receivers of knowledge, such as the gardener or shepherd analogy, implying that students are expected to behave like plants or sheep, are not as useful as those that focus on what students can do. A famous metaphor attributed to William Butler Yeats underlines the need for motivation of students: "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire". Very true: education should transcend the mere transmission of content; it should be more about sparking curiosity, teaching students how to learn, and encouraging independent and life-long learning.

An insightful Chinese proverb can be valuable in this connection: “Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself”.


Posted by May Mikati on 06 September 2012, 2:35 PM