This study explored whether the metaphors written by 504 Iranian learners of English and 140 English teachers behaved like semantic features of the schemata they likened themselves to. The 239 student and 249 teacher metaphors elicited from the participants were submitted to four raters who assigned them to 13 conceptual categories established by Saban, Kocbeker, and Saban (2007). The statistical analysis of data showed that the categories behave as collective knowledge because there is no significant difference in the frequency of student metaphors written by both students and teachers who view students as passive recipients of knowledge, developing organisms and absolute compliants. Students and teachers, however, differ significantly as regards teacher categories. While the highest percentage of students metaphorised their teachers as facilitators/scaffolders, the teachers assigned a counselor’s role to themselves, indicating that metaphors are sensitive to social positions. Since the categories are pretty stable over age, proficiency level, years and fields of study as well as experience, they reflect the ever-evolving nature of schema in the variety of metaphors with which the categories are depicted and thus reflect the reality of language learning and teaching in Iran.

Keywords