The act of explanation through Educational Rhetoric activity according to the pragmatic approach - Metaphor as a Model -

Abstract

In this paper, we aim to analyze the act of explanation through the lens of rhetorical and educational activity, focusing in particular on the study of metaphor, a topic that poses considerable challenges. Learners often struggle to grasp metaphors due to the ambiguity and complexity that characterize them, as they involve a deviation from the literal meaning for a contextually motivated reason.

We approach this issue from a pragmatic perspective, since pragmatics examines the relationships between linguistic signs and their users, that is, the communicative situations involving the speaker and the listener. From this interaction, discourse emerges, grounded on two essential components: the speaker and the addressee. Similarly, the educational process also rests on the duality teacher/sender and learner/receiver. From this standpoint, we will explore how pragmatics, as a linguistic field, can contribute to the teaching of explanatory activity, and how the teacher performs the act of explanation and transforms it into an effective pedagogical process.

The study concludes that pragmatics plays a significant role in the didactics of metaphor, facilitating learners’ ability to identify and understand it, provided that strategic explanatory methods are applied.