Borrowing a phrase

Text: an original contemporary speech-style practice extract.

When we say that a plan needs a roadmap, we borrow the confidence of a road. Roads have signs, destinations and people who can tell us when we have taken the wrong turn. A plan may possess none of those advantages. The word can make uncertainty sound as though somebody has already surveyed it.

I am not proposing that we ban metaphors from meetings. Without them, we would need much longer meetings, an outcome few of us would welcome. I propose that we ask what a borrowed image brings with it. If a team is a family, can a member disagree without sounding ungrateful? If a decision is a race, who decided that speed matters more than direction?

Keep the images that help us think, and question the ones that think for us. A useful phrase gives an unfamiliar problem a shape we can examine. A comfortable phrase may conceal the part of the problem that refuses that shape. Before approving the roadmap, let us check whether anybody has actually found a road.

Analyse how the writer uses language and structure to interest and engage the reader.

In your answer, consider:

• language features and techniques
• structural techniques
• the effect on the reader.

Support your views with detailed reference to the extract.