What Are The Best Books On Metaphor And Clean Language?

I'm up to my neck in metaphor at the moment: my desk is piled high with books. What better time could there be to recommend a late-summer reading list?

The stand-out best book on metaphor at the moment is James Geary's I Is An Other.

This is the book I wish I'd written - a sweeping survey of the state of current thinking and research on the topic, entertainingly written and packed with examples from a wide range of contexts.

There's nutritious food for thought on every page: for example, did you realise how the metaphors we use for the financial markets affects how they behave? (Read more on this).

And if you need a source of quotable quotes about metaphor, this is the place to look: Geary is also an expert on aphorisms, so he knows how to turn a phrase.

The only problem with the book is the title. What were the publishers thinking?!

Gerald Zaltman's How Customers Think may be suited-and-booted by Harvard Business School Press, but it's still an excellent general introduction to the importance of metaphor in thought.

Of course, Zaltman's examples come from marketing and business, but I think that makes them more accessible to the general reader than, say, therapy examples.

After all, we've all been customers.It's an easy read and until Geary's book came out, would have been top of my recommended list.


The most baffling thing about this book is how few people in the marketing world have heard of it, or of Zaltman - let alone read it. He is Professor of Marketing at Harvard, after all.

Also from Zaltman comes Marketing Metaphoria. I think this one's a bit lightweight, quite honestly. But it's on the desk because it contains details of his research into universal metaphors.

Last-but-not-least comes The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker. He's another Harvard professor - this time in psychology - with a populist writing style. It's not as easy a read as the books mentioned above, but it well repays the bit of effort involved.

As with Geary's book, almost every page contains an exciting idea.

This book is totally unputdownable if you really want to know about the mind and how it works, and especially if you're a language-lover. Academic research references a speciality!


Recommended Clean Language Books

  • Clean Language: Revealing Metaphors and Opening Minds by Wendy Sullivan and Judy Rees
  • Clean Approaches For Coaches by Marian Way
  • From Contempt To Curiosity by Caitlin Walker
  • Clean Language In The Classroom by Julie McCracken
  • Metaphors In Mind by James Lawley And Penny Tompkins