2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

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.