Michael Erard’s text, “See Through Words” left me with more questions than intrigued. My annotation focused more on questioning what he meant when when we wrote about things such as metaphors being a, “categorisation proposal” (Erard, 2) and, a “‘mapping’ between two concepts” (Erard, 3). During the annotation process, a single section of Erard’s text provoked my thoughts and really got me thinking. During Erard’s explanation of how metaphors are categorisation proposals, he explained an earlier metaphor, “Paintbrushes are pumps”. Following the explanation, opened the doors to my mind to help me understand at least what they meant when they describe categorisation proposals.

Metaphors have forever been taught in school as the comparison of two unlike things, such as the pump and paintbrush. From reading Erard’s text, I am lost after being told they are “categorisation proposals” and, “‘mapping’ between two concepts”. I’m sure if it is explained in possibly simpler terms and in an informal setting I could grasp the concept as to what he means, but just from reading I do not see how a metaphor can be used for “‘mapping’ between two concepts”. Initially, I believed the comparison of paintbrushes and pumps to be some deeper level thinking of metaphor. However, after the, “categorisation process” was explained the metaphor made a lot more sense. The “pump,” was used as a generality, another name for an item that can move liquids around, just like paintbrushes move paint. While still largely confused about the majority of this text, I can still look back on this assignment with a bit of joy of being able to understand at least how the categorisation process works.