The Mind, Metaphor and Health (original) (raw)
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The purpose of this paper is to examine metaphors used by cancer patients that either represent their views of the cancer itself or the emotions evoked by this experience. Metaphors are an integral part of our everyday life as well as the way we interpret both ourselves and the world that surrounds us. The way we understand an illness, whether as an assailant or an obstacle, can set the treatment. A collection of personal stories of cancer English speaking patients will be surveyed. We shall examine whether metaphors used in this discourse are of formative or informative nature in regards to their social and personal function. In discourse metaphors are used to portray certain aspects of reality. Thus, the choice of the metaphor will influence our understanding of the concept. Since cancer is a very serious illness that can lead to a tragic end, it is inevitable that the patients will become confused and stressed. What can help during this process is clarification of their state and a way to express themselves. Metaphors not only come in handy, but are also unavoidable in these situations. If we are able to understand how we perceive cancer and what emotions it stirs in us we might be able to better understand it and offer a fuller and more humane path of recovery. Key Words: conceptual metaphors, cancer, emotions, discourse, medicine.
[Graphic Medicine] Reflections on the Visceral: Metaphors and Illness Experience
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2020
With changing literary and socio-cultural conventions, theories on metaphor have undergone revision in their conceptualisation and use since Aristotle's Poetics. Although Aristotle premised his theoretical framework of metaphor on analogy, most contemporary research on metaphor is grounded on its role as a linguistic device and of poetic imagination until the radical exploratory studies made by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, who redefined metaphor as a characteristic of thought and action. However, a systematic reflection on metaphor as a phenomenon of lived experience and conditions for its expression is lacking in different metaphor theories. Therefore, this essay aims to provide an overview of the major theoretical postulates on metaphor, with an emphasis on Lakoff and Johnson's cognitive metaphor theory (CMT) and its correspondence to expressions of illness experience. Further, the wider implications of using metaphors, especially visual metaphors in graphic pathographies, will be analysed in the essay.
The Therapeutic Psychopoetics of Cancer Metaphors: Challenges in Interdisciplinarity
2003
Narratives of life with illness occupy a rapidly growing field in interdisciplinary health studies. Among illnesses, can- cer is the one most often addressed. It is obviously an experience that is enormously difficult to put into language, and it comes as no surprise that cancer discourse abounds with metaphor. Given the pervasiveness of metaphor in cancer discourse, it is important to examine how these tropes are used in a struggle for meaning that appears to be particularly crucial in cancer. Metaphors that may seem constructive and therapeutic to one patient or writer (or to his/her readers) can be destructive and further traumatizing for others. Because our meanings vary so radically, we need to analyze the range of metaphoricity in cancer discourse and map the resources of language for conceptual- izing cancer. This study of semantic properties in cancer metaphors makes use of an interdisciplinary "therapeutic psychopoetics" to focus on cancer metaphors in Fritz Zorn&...
Metaphor through the Lens of Clinical Medicine: The Case of Specialty-Specific Signs
Armenian Folia Anglistika
The present paper aims at discussing certain metaphors which name diseases resembling specialty-specific signs manifested in different occupations. An attempt is made towards showcasing the cognitive value that metaphor entails when used in a clinical setting to verbalize different diseases. Stedman’s Medical Dictionary – currently the most content-rich medical dictionary – has served a major reference point for the analysis of specialty-specific metaphors in Medicine.
7. Metaphorical Aspects in Cancer Discourse
2016
In this paper, firstly different perspectives on the notion of metaphor are introduced, along with a characterization of types within Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), in terms of correspondences between domains. Secondly, cognitive functions of metaphor are discussed, including categorization and conceptualization, as well as discourse communicative functions, such as deliberate and novel usage. Then, cognitive and communicative functions of conventional metaphors in a set of genres from medical discourse on cancer are illustrated and discussed. The corpus of data consists of research papers, scientific news notices and press articles. Conclusions are drawn on the characterization of genres on the basis of metaphorical usage particularly the cognitive and communicative functions of metaphor.
Metaphorical Aspects in Cancer Discourse
Medical Discourse in Professional, Academic and Popular Settings. Ed. by Ordóñez-López, P. & Edo-Marzà, N. in Language at Work Series, Multilingual Matters, 2016
In this paper, firstly different perspectives on the notion of metaphor are introduced, along with a characterization of types within Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), in terms of correspondences between domains. Secondly, cognitive functions of metaphor are discussed, including categorization and conceptualization, as well as discourse communicative functions, such as deliberate and novel usage. Then, cognitive and communicative functions of conventional metaphors in a set of genres from medical discourse on cancer are illustrated and discussed. The corpus of data consists of research papers, scientific news notices and press articles. Conclusions are drawn on the characterization of genres on the basis of metaphorical usage particularly the cognitive and communicative functions of metaphor.
Metaphor in Illness Writing: Fight and Battle Reused
Edinburgh University Press eBooks, 2022
Metaphor in Illness Writing argues that even when a metaphor appears problematic and limiting, it need not be dropped or dismissed. Metaphors are not inherently harmful or beneficial; instead, they can be used in unexpected and creative ways. This book analyses the illness writing of contemporary North American writers who reimagine and reappropriate the supposedly harmful metaphor ‘illness is a fight’ and shows how Susan Sontag, Audre Lorde, Anatole Broyard, David Foster Wallace and other writers turn the fight metaphor into a space of agency, resistance, self-knowledge and aesthetic pleasure. It joins a conversation in Medical Humanities about alternatives to the predominance of narrative and responds to the call for more metaphor literacy and metaphor competence.
The Metaphoric Body … the Missing Link Between Illness, Language and Life
"The greatest thing, by far, is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learned and is also a sign of genius." Aristotle "…a powerful metaphor may complete its work so effectively as to obliterate its own traces." Gemma Corradi Fiumara. Though all language is metaphorical in its very essence, today's blindly and deafly literalistic understanding of language in the sciences, not least in biomedical science - constitutes an an assault on the interrelation of language, life and illness.