What’s Metaphor Meant For in the Classroom?
Imogen Barber
Could the approaches we use to help our most vulnerable learners sometimes hold them back? The well-intentioned goal of making language accessible in the classroom for autistic and ELL pupils risks embedding an absolute and inflexible practice and literal bias, says Nick Morgan Baker, Dyslexia Action Tutor, member of The Dyslexia Guild, and Local Authority SEND Adviser.
Nick’s article first appeared in The Dyslexia Review, Spring 2026. A condensed version appears below.
What’s Metaphor Meant For in the Classroom?
By avoiding phrases like “spill the beans” (to tell a secret) or “break a leg” (to wish someone good luck), teachers manage the risk of confusion and social anxiety for austic learners.
Yet by stripping down language, by making it literal in the classroom, an unexpected consequence may build a glass ceiling. This prevents learners from fully understanding deep ideas. Language carries ideas. Metaphor transports complex ideas with strong imagery. Metaphor restricted is complexity never grounded.
By decluttering content we risk relegating all learners, not just the most vulnerable, to language poverty. We reduce their exposure to rich and diverse language styles and registers. When learners experience metaphors in a range of contexts, they grow in cultural and social independence. They develop critical thinking, a confidence to express and interpret complex ideas. Their language flourishes.
The new Ofsted Education Inspection Framework (2025) sets out spoken language, oracy and rhetoric as one foundation in education alongside cognitive load theory and child centred and experiential teaching:
“…explicitly taught how to communicate effectively through spoken language (oracy), articulate ideas, develop understanding and engage with others through speaking, listening and communication…”
Mastering metaphor does not decorate language, metaphor crafts oracy, stepping learners out of simple and literal transactions into persuasive and interactive rhetoric. While using literal langauge only may seem helpful, it creates an unhealthy language learning diet in our classrooms where rich, nuanced language is underused.
Core Language Skills Drive Misunderstanding
A meta-analysis of forty-one studies by Kalandadze et al. (2018) examined the hypothesis that autistic individuals have a weaker ability to understand metaphors compared to their typically developing peers. It found that autistic individuals generally show poorer comprehension of figurative language. However, this weakness was found to be less significant and relatively small when accounting for core language skills, such as verbal reasoning, vocabulary (synonyms), and syntax (relative clauses).
In other words, autistic learners understood metaphors when matched by similar core language skills as their typically developing peers. The difference in metaphor comprehension was significantly reduced between the two groups, becoming a relatively small variation. This finding suggests that effective instruction targeting these fundamental language abilities could help reduce the difficulty in understanding metaphors.
Literally better?
Based on advice from key organisations like the National Autistic Society (NAS), National Association for Special Educational Needs (NASEN), and the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), it is clear that using literal language is a crucial strategy for teaching autistic learners and English Language Learners (ELLs).
Resources from these groups (and many others) all emphasise that a direct communication style helps these learners avoid confusion.
This is because these learners may process information in a more concrete way or lack the cultural context to understand figurative meanings. The core principles of this approach state:
- Be direct: State exactly what you mean instead of relying on idioms.
- Use concrete language: Focus on tangible facts and explicit instructions.
- Support with visuals: Use pictures and other visual aids to reinforce verbal communication.
- Welcome different communication styles: Recognise that a preference for literal thinking is a valid way of processing information.
Rebalancing Language in the Classroom
While these strategies are well-intentioned and effective, a problem arises when the advice becomes absolute: that literal language is “good”, and metaphor is “bad.” This oversimplification frames figurative language as a higher-order, academic skill, when in reality, metaphor is an essential and pervasive part of our everyday language. We use metaphors constantly in both spoken and written communication.
To address this, there’s a need to bring balance to language use in the classroom. Instead of treating metaphor as an advanced or optional skill, educators should provide all learners with equitable opportunities to experience and understand both literal and figurative meanings. This ensures that autistic learners and ELLs not only master foundational language skills but also gain the tools to navigate the metaphorical richness of the world around them.
Why Metaphor Matters
Language is dynamic, metaphorically a “living, breathing system.” Words come and go like styles and fads. Take Australian English and new arrivals like “balanda,” an Aboriginal loan word meaning non-Aboriginal or European person, or “goon,” which refers to the bladder of wine inside the box, or “gunzel,” Australian slang for a railway or tram enthusiast. Now consider these retired words, now old and obsolete in Australian English, like “cockatooing,” a term for small-scale farming, particularly in a haphazard or migratory fashion, or “hot-windy,” meaning characterised by hot winds. The meanings of words change, a process known as semantic shift. This evolution is driven by our need for expression, economy, and analogy (Deutscher, 2005).
Metaphor, a non-literal comparison between two different things, shows how semantic shift drives these processes. Through analogy, metaphor orders and makes sense of our experiences. By expressiveness, it introduces novel and new meanings into our language, while via economy, it optimises meaning by minimising the amount we say to maximise meaning.
In education, however, the focus on literal language for clarity risks making language less dynamic. This well-intentioned “literal bias” simplifies lessons and reduces potential confusion, but at a cost to the learner’s capability to be expressive with economy of meaning and the use of analogy – non-literalness.
Consider the common phrase, “pull your socks up.” To a native speaker, this is a nuanced way of saying, “You’re underperforming, and I know you can do better.” For an autistic or ELL learner, however, it can be a source of significant confusion. Current classroom adjustments often suggest avoiding such expressions entirely.
Yet by avoiding idioms and metaphors, we not only hold back a fundamental aspect of how language works but also actively disadvantage our most vulnerable learners.
The Problem with “Literal Bias”
While “Literal Bias” is a well-meant and evidence-based approach for certain learning goals, it has unintended consequences if applied unconditionally because language is always changing. Both in the classroom and in the world, metaphor is not a decorative frill; it is a central engine of linguistic evolution. Since metaphor drives this evolution and is an essential part of how meanings change, metaphorical language is not optional. We use it all the time.
Avoiding metaphors harms learning. While some learners may implicitly grasp these concepts, many others require direct, explicit instruction. This includes providing cognitive and language strategies for decoding meaning, considering context, and understanding cultural references. The solution is not to simplify our language; it is to equip all learners with the tools to master its beautiful and intricate complexity.
One way we can “skill up” all learners is by encouraging novel metaphor use in the classroom and at home, as this approach is particularly effective for neurodiverse learners, as seen in recent research.
Novel and Conventional Metaphor
Autistic learners are capable of contextual thought under certain conditions. When matched on core language ability, like verbal reasoning, autistic learners understand non-literal language almost as well as literal language. When not matched, autistic learners generally show poorer comprehension of figurative language compared to their typically developing peers (Kalandadze et al., 2018).
This so-called literal bias observed in autistic learners narrows even more when they are asked to generate and understand novel metaphors (not using prior knowledge) compared to conventional metaphors (using prior knowledge). Autistic age is also a factor in novel metaphor use.
Autistic children juggle meanings when they hear a new (novel) metaphor by relying heavily on working memory and executive function. They search instinctively for similarities not based on meaning. A 2011 study demonstrated that autistic children still misunderstand novel metaphors compared to their typically developing peers and those with learning disabilities. Yet autistic children trained with thinking maps (a visual-verbal organiser of features shared by two words, e.g: train of thought) can improve their metaphoric understanding (Mashal & Kasirer 2011).
This concept of mental flexibility is supported by a later study involving adult participants conducted by the same researchers. When groups were matched based on how well they reason verbally, they found adults with high-functioning autism generated more creative and novel metaphors than their neurotypical peers (Mashal & Kasirer 2014). This was especially true of metaphors generated in a moment of lived experience, “joy-bits” being one such example. Autistic adults struggled more often with conventional metaphors, such as “sharp tongue”; however, because they required rote learning and past social experience to decode.
Both studies (2011, 2014) show autistic children and adults create meanings from the start without prior knowledge, even if they get it wrong. They build on strong vocabulary, they can shift concrete perspectives (core language skills and executive functioning), rather than relying on social memory (analogic abstract reasoning). As autistic learners grow older, they use novel metaphors more effectively.
Conventional metaphors, which are frequently used and familiar, have an existing meaning that has already been learned. Examples include “the head of the football team”, “time is money”, and “lost in thought”.
In contrast, novel metaphors are infrequently used, if not highly original, and require more cognitive effort to compare possible meanings and draw inferences. For example, the title of the book A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness serves as a novel metaphor for grief and truth rather than the scary alien-creature stereotype.
Conventional metaphors are often simply memorised, like a word in a dictionary or a set phrase you’ve heard a thousand times. In other words, analogic reasoning dominates. Novel metaphors, however, rely on a mix of mental flexibility and the language system, alongside some analogic reasoning. The autistic learner must compare existing meanings with new ones presented within the metaphor, adapt, then review for a new meaning.
This process, such as figuring out how the monster in A Monster Calls is different from a typical monster, supports a stronger relationship between core language skills and figurative language comprehension for older learners with autism, especially those with higher-than-average verbal reasoning skills.
The research indicates older autistic learners with these higher core language skills approach metaphors as logical puzzles to solve, not social clues to resolve. They simulate the proposition of a feeling through sensory contrast and comparison between an analogue and the reality, like sketching the portrait of a person rather than knowing intuitively by social perceptions. They calculate the logic of the physical person to the portrait they draw in their thoughts.
This rationale provides the foundation for our framework. We move beyond simply memorising conventional phrases and teach learners to connect the core skills of analogic reasoning, executive functioning and language skills (conceptual combination).
A Framework for Teaching Figurative Language
To balance literal and non-literal language, we need a structured framework that teaches learners cognitive and language strategies directly.
Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT):
At its core, CMT argues that much of our language is rooted in a few fundamental conceptual metaphors, such as “argument is war” “the mind is a machine” “ideas are objects” “time is money” and “love is a journey” (Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M., 1980). By teaching these core concepts, we can help learners understand that “winning an argument” or “defeating an opponent’s claim” is not literal combat but a conceptual extension of it.
Active Exploration: Instead of avoiding metaphors, we should encourage learners to explore them. Teachers can introduce a metaphorical phrase like “pull your socks up” and guide a class discussion on its literal and non-literal meanings, its origin, and when it is used.
Contextual Integration: Learners can practice identifying metaphors in different contexts, from literature to everyday conversation. This practice helps them develop inferential skills and link a metaphor’s meaning to its surrounding context.
Active Exploration in Practice: This exercise moves beyond simply defining the idiom to actively exploring its components, meaning, and context.
| 1. Literal vs. Figurative Meaning:
Teacher Prompts: “Imagine I’m a football coach talking to my team at halftime. I say, ‘Alright everyone, listen up. You need to pull your socks up!’ What is the literal meaning of this? What does it look like to physically pull up your socks?” Learner Activity: Learners can literally act it out, discuss the physical action, and then brainstorm reasons why someone might need to physically do this (e.g., they’re falling down, they’re not ready to play). Cognitive Strategy Taught: Literal Decoding and Visualisation. This strategy helps learners, especially those who may default to literal interpretation, to first process the surface meaning before moving on to the abstract |
| 2. Contextual Clues and Inferential Thinking:
Teacher Prompts: “Now, think about the football game. We are losing. We’re playing badly. What does ‘pull your socks up’ probably mean in this situation? Why would the coach say this instead of just ‘try harder’?” Learner Activity: Learners discuss the context (a losing game, a frustrated coach) and infer the intended meaning. They can brainstorm synonyms or alternative phrases the coach could have used (e.g., “improve your performance,” “focus and work harder”). Cognitive Strategy Taught: Contextual Inference. This strategy teaches learners to use the surrounding situation, speaker’s tone, and listener’s state to deduce non-literal meaning. |
| 3. Metaphorical Mapping and Origin:
Teacher Prompts: “Where do you think this phrase comes from? How does the physical action of pulling up your socks connect to doing better? Think about what happens when your socks are falling down—it’s sloppy, you might trip, you’re not ready. What does that tell us about the person’s performance in the game?” Learner Activity: Learners engage in a guided discussion to map the physical domain (“sloppy, unready, falling socks”) to the abstract domain (“underperforming, not focused, not trying hard enough”). The teacher can provide historical context if known (e.g., its link to athletic uniforms). Cognitive Strategy Taught: Conceptual Mapping. This is the core of Conceptual Metaphor Theory in practice. It teaches learners to identify the underlying conceptual connections between a physical action or object and an abstract idea, which is a key skill for unlocking a vast array of figurative language. |
| 4. Application and Role-Playing: Teacher Prompts: “Now, let’s practice using it. In what other situations could you ‘pull your socks up’? Can a learner ‘pull their socks up’ on a school project? Can a country ‘pull its socks up’ on a global issue? Learner Activity: Learners create short skits or sentences using the phrase in different contexts (e.g., a parent to a child, a boss to an employee). Cognitive Strategy Taught: Flexible Application. This final step reinforces understanding by having learners apply the concept in new situations, demonstrating their mastery of its nuanced meaning and use. |
Conclusion
By embracing a more direct approach to teaching metaphor, we move beyond the limiting literal bias, creating a truly inclusive learning environment without language poverty. We teach classrooms with healthy language learning diets between learner led conversations in teacher led discourse.
This strategy benefits everyone, from the neurodiverse learner who gains essential social communication tools to the English Language learner who better understands cultural nuances, and the learner with dyslexia whose big picture thinking thrives on metaphor once its anatomy is decoded and learnt.
The challenge is not to simplify our language but equip our learners with the tools to master its full richness. By teaching metaphor directly, we do more than just build vocabulary; we give learners the tools to navigate the intricate fabric of human thought and connection. Idea analogy, verbal expression and economy of meaning – that’s what metaphor is meant for in the classroom.
About Nick Morgan Baker
Nick Morgan Baker is a tutor for Dyslexia Action and also works for a Local Authority as a SEND advisor. Prior to this he was a teacher for over twenty five years.
His teaching specialism became SEND in further education at Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5. He qualified as a specialist teacher and assessor in 2005. Currently he tutors on modules in the Diploma in Specialist Teaching (DIST).
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