Fenómenos relacionados con el uso de metáforas en el discurso del profesor. El caso de las gráficas de funciones

Abstract

In this paper, we comment a phenomenon that is observed when analyzing the teacher's discourse when explaining of the graphical representation of functions at high school: the teacher uses expressions that suggest, among others, metaphors like «The graph of a function can be considered as the trace of a point that moves over the graph». In the first part, we present the theoretical framework about the embodiment of mind proposed by Lakoff and Núñez. In the second part, we comment the different metaphors that have structured the concept of graphic of a function. In the third part we describe the study of a teacher -following the sequence: a) video-recording of a class, b) interviews, c) analysis of the produc­tions of the students- which shows that the teacher uses these metaphors in a not completely conscious way and that he believes that their effects in the understanding of the students are innocuous. We end up with some conclusions about the possible causes of this phenomenon.