This paper is part of a collection of essays on several topics that are not thematically linked. Daloiso’s contribution discusses the results of a corpus-based study on the metaphors and metonymies used in Italian academic and popular-scientific discourse to refer to students with specific learning differences (SpLDs). Taking a cognitive linguistic perspective, the study revealed that SpLDs tend to be conceptualised through negative metaphors and there is a growing tendency to use the term SpLDs to refer to people with SpLDs – which is indeed an instance of metonymy. In the light of these results, this paper discusses some implication for Educational Linguistics.