Reading Guide: Routes Through the Wiki

This reading guide offers six short routes through the existing library. Each route starts with an accessible question, connects a small group of articles and suggests something concrete to notice. The order is an editorial suggestion, not a curriculum or a prerequisite for training.

Use the glossary for unfamiliar terms, the Metaphor Atlas for visual browsing, the Metaphor Research Library for source texts, or the Video Library to choose a recording. These routes provide background reading alongside Metaphors of Movement training.

1. Begin with language

Question: What makes an expression metaphorical?

1. Idiomatic, Literal and Figurative Communication: begin with distinctions in everyday use.
2. Metaphor, Metonymy, Simile, Analogy and Symbol: compare the relationships that different terms describe.
3. Metaphor, Context and Speaker Meaning: consider what changes when an expression is used in a different situation.
4. Metaphor and Idioms: Motivation, Meaning and Use: distinguish a familiar expression's conventional use from its imagery.

Reading prompt: Invent two settings for “We are on the same track”, one involving travel and one involving agreement. Identify which details make each reading plausible. Keep the complete wording beside the interpretation.

Continue with: Conceptual Metaphor Theory for an account of recurring patterns, or Metaphor Categories for further distinctions. Look up context, metaphor and idiom as needed.

2. Explore space, movement and relationships

Question: What changes when the image changes?

1. Image Schemas: Containment, Paths, Balance and Connection: explore schematic relationships such as inside/outside and source/path/goal.
2. Being Stuck: Barriers, Loops and Waiting: compare obstruction, repetition and delay.
3. Agency and Motion: Moving and Being Moved: notice who or what supplies movement.
4. Inside and Outside: Shelter, Confinement and Belonging: compare the roles that boundaries can play.

Reading prompt: Compare the invented descriptions “The project is behind a barrier”, “The project is going in circles” and “The project is waiting for a signal”. Note what each description says about movement, what it leaves unspecified, and which details would have to be supplied by context.

Continue with: Comparative Metaphor Library and Metaphor Atlas. For background on the approach itself, use About Metaphors of Movement and Situational Relational Positioning. A comparison between descriptions does not establish what an individual must mean.

3. Follow a research question

Question: How would we investigate a claim about metaphor?

1. Metaphor Identification and Corpus Research: separate finding words from judging their uses.
2. Metaphor and Reasoning: compare framing experiments and a critical follow-up.
3. Metaphor Across Languages and Cultures: examine the scope of claims made across languages and settings.
4. The Neuroscience of Metaphor Comprehension: consider what different kinds of measurement can establish.

Reading prompt: Choose one paper linked from an article. Record the question, the people or texts studied, what was compared, what was measured and the limits acknowledged. Then check whether the wiki's summary stays within those limits.

The crime-framing studies provide a useful paired reading: Thibodeau and Boroditsky reported framing effects, while Steen and colleagues' follow-up did not find the same differential effect under its study conditions. Read the methods as well as the conclusions.

Continue with: the books and papers in Metaphor Research Library. An interpretation of a passage, a recurring corpus pattern and an experimental effect answer different questions.

4. Read Joseph Campbell alongside his sources

Question: What belongs to a story, and what belongs to Campbell's interpretation?

1. Joseph Campbell: begin with the author and the context of his work.
2. Myth as Metaphor: Joseph Campbell's Approach: examine his interpretive approach.
3. The Hero's Journey: follow one influential comparative pattern.
4. Comparative Mythology: Methods, Evidence and Limitations: consider the selection of stories and the limits of comparisons.

Reading prompt: Choose a recording or excerpt from Joseph Campbell: Reading and Listening Guide. Keep three notes: the story being discussed, Campbell's interpretation, and your own response. When possible, compare the story with a named edition or translation.

Continue with: The Grail Quest and the Wasteland, The Trickster: Boundaries, Reversals and Disruption or Joseph Campbell's Four Functions of Myth. The Campbell video index links to recordings in their article context. Check whether a recording contains Campbell speaking, an interviewer speaking, or later commentary about him.

5. Read literature closely

Question: How does an image work in a particular telling?

1. Metaphor in Literature and Creativity: consider imagery in relation to creative language.
2. Narrative and Interpretation: distinguish story, telling and interpretive claim.
3. Choose a work from Stories and literature, such as Beowulf, Frankenstein or The Canterbury Tales.
4. Conceptual Blending and Mental Spaces: explore one framework for analysing combinations of ideas.

Reading prompt: Select a brief passage in a named edition. Identify who speaks, what happens immediately before and after, and which words support your reading. Try a second interpretation and identify the evidence that would distinguish it from the first.

Continue with: Sensory Metaphor, Visual and Multimodal Metaphor or The Artist as Mythmaker. A modern adaptation may be an interesting comparison without being evidence of what an earlier version said.

6. Explore public language and conversation

Question: What does a description invite us to notice?

1. Metaphor in Politics and Public Debate: examine framing and public argument.
2. Susan Sontag and Illness Metaphors: consider imagery, judgement and lived experience.
3. The Ethics of Metaphor: examine responsibility in choosing and interpreting descriptions.
4. Metaphor in Therapeutic Conversation: read research about dialogue in its particular setting.

Reading prompt: Choose two descriptions of the same issue. Record what each foregrounds, what each leaves out and whose perspective is represented. Keep any claim about actual effects separate from your analysis of the wording.

Continue with: Metaphor and Personal Narratives or The Conduit Metaphor of Communication. These are routes for studying published material, not instructions for applying a therapeutic procedure.

Keep a useful reading record

The following small record works with a book, paper, story or recording:

Field	What to record
Source	Author or speaker, title, year, publisher or channel, edition or version, and link
Location	Page, chapter, section or video timestamp
Kind of material	For example: original story, theoretical argument, empirical paper, interview or later commentary
Evidence	The passage, observation or comparison supporting the claim
Your interpretation	A clearly identified paraphrase or proposed reading
Open question	What remains uncertain, what another source might clarify, or where the comparison stops

For a video, read the accompanying article before watching, then return to its sources for claims you want to investigate. If captions are available, use them as a navigation aid and check names or quotations against the recording. Record an access date for material that can change.

Related pages

• Glossary of Metaphor and Meaning
• Metaphor Research Library
• Video Library
• Subject index
• Contributor guide