The paper discusses metaphoric conceptions of language in linguistics and in language teaching/language learning. It starts with some brief remarks on contemporary theories of metaphor. Section 2 traces two salient metaphoric conceptions of language: the biological metaphors in 19th century romantic linguistics (Humboldt, Schlegel, Grimm) and the conduit metaphor. Section 3 addresses the role of metaphor in language learning / language teaching. It analyses spontaneous metalinguistic comments made by French primary school students in language lessons. With respect to young learners, the authors observe that metaphors may hinder the construction of metalinguistic knowledge. With respect to older primary school students, they observe a more positive effect. (Frank Polzenhagen)