How vividly I remember the awe-inspiring impact such wizard characters had on my psyche, when I was a kid! Especially those creations of J.R.R. Tolkien!
They would take me along to an ethereal world and let me ‘live’ with them.
Back to the real world and I accost the wizard in a different avatar. As a computer terminology!
How is that? Where is the connect? I scratch the surface a little bit… I see it is Anthropomorphism that is at work. Attributing human characteristics or behavior to things that are not human!
A ‘user interface’ or an ‘application programming interface’ that is supposed to guide the learner, is metaphorically anthropomorphized into a wizard.
Metaphor has its charm. My connecting to something new becomes much easier when it is presented to me on lines of something that I am completely familiar with.
“But, be on the watch out”, cautions the MSTP. “Anthropomorphism could often be the result of an imprecise or incomplete understanding of the topic at hand.” Not just that. “Not all readers would grasp the limits of the metaphor. Further, anthropomorphic metaphors may be interpreted differently by people from different cultures.” For instance, “a child object is said to inherit attributes from its parent or ancestors” could as well be a nightmare for an ill-informed learner.
At the end of the whole thing, the lesson I take home is this. While metaphor has its pluses, it nevertheless needs to be employed with utmost care, keeping in mind the learner’s sensitivities.
Written by Nirmal Ranganathan
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Published on 12-Jul-2013
