When re-reading Erard’s essay “See Through Words”, I realized the message he was conveying was that anything can be designed to become a metaphor, it just needs to fit the correct context. Erard argues that metaphors can be created, going against past thought processes that metaphors just happened and were never designed. This came to my attention when I researched further into pseudo-mistakes. The prefix ‘pseudo-‘ means false and is used to mark something that seemingly appears to be one thing but is, in fact, something else. Erard discusses how an effective metaphor designer needs to “generate lots of pseudo-mistakes” (para. 5). I was a little bewildered the first time I read through this section and then by the second time through and with the help of a little extra research, I could finally comprehend the point Erard was trying to make. Metaphors use comparisons that will uncover deeper meanings. Therefore, if seen in the right context, and the example Erard uses is that ‘A paintbrush is a kind of pump’, far-fetched comparisons make sense in metaphors. It is important to not look at the terms used literally, but rather how they connect with one another. And that is why a metaphor can be considered a ‘pseudo-mistake’; the terms used are meant to mean something else than what they initially appear to mean.
Furthermore, when reading through the essay again, I began to understand Erard’s discussion about explaining how to design metaphors with metaphors. (He does this by comparing a metaphor to a room. Another example of a pseudo-mistake I now realize.) The first time I read through “See Through Words”, I was confused by the fact that he was describing a metaphor with a metaphor. Perhaps I was thinking to literally because I compared this statement with having the word in its definition. I criticized him because he was explaining something with the thing itself: a metaphor. Though now I understand where Erard is coming from. He uses the metaphor of a room to describe how metaphors offer a new perspective on something often looked at superficially. The choice of terms and arrangement of them can all impact how the metaphor is perceived. Just like a room, with the placement of the window offering different views (perspectives) outside and the furniture showing how visitors need to adapt and be comfortable in the room. The furniture relates to the target audience of the metaphor that is being designed. The target audience needs to adapt and grow comfortable with it in order for the metaphor to be understood.
