Using conceptual metaphor and functional grammar to explore how language used in physics affects student learning

This paper introduces a theory about the role of language in learning physics. The theory is developed in the context of physics students' and physicists' talking and writing about the subject of quantum mechanics. We found that physicists' language encodes different varieties of analogical models through the use of grammar and conceptual metaphor. We hypothesize that students categorize concepts into ontological categories based on the grammatical structure of physicists' language. We also hypothesize that students over-extend and misapply conceptual metaphors in physicists' speech and writing. Using our theory, we will show how, in some cases, we can explain student difficulties in quantum mechanics as difficulties with language.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. ST:PE

The folded tree

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/32525/1/0000623.pd

A fire station in your body: Metaphors in educational texts on HIV/AIDS

Contains fulltext : 82957.pdf (postprint version ) (Open Access)7 p

Building metaphorical schemas when reading text

Even though our language is pervaded by metaphor, we do not necessarily think metaphorically. Knowing whether people make conceptual connections between a source and a target domain, and if so under which conditions, is of theoretical as well as practical interest, for example in text design. This paper experimentally investigates under which conditions people build their textual representations of a news article on a metaphorical schema. To disentangle the inconclusive output of recent reaction-time studies, we conduct a memory study. We probe the effect of signaling and conventionality on textual representations - two variables which have been ignored or conflated in previous studies. We find that people are more likely to metaphorically structure their representations of a news article to the extent that it contains novel metaphorical expressions. The inclusion of similes that explicitly signal extended mappings between source and target domains may also act as an aid to integration, although our evidence for this is more equivocal. These findings are discussed in relation to the career of metaphor theory and to the role of deliberateness in metaphor processing

Commutative machines : technical note

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/6130/5/bac6916.0001.001.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/6130/4/bac6916.0001.001.tx

Sequence generators and formal languages : technical report

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/3975/5/bab4756.0001.001.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/3975/4/bab4756.0001.001.tx