1,721,002 research outputs found
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Introduction: metaphor and language
No full textIt is difficult to overstate the importance of metaphor in human language(s), thought and experience. Over centuries of scholarship and a period of particularly intense focus in the last four decades, metaphor has been defined, theorized and applied in many different and sometimes mutually incompatible ways. Nonetheless, a fairly broad consensus exists that metaphor involves the perception of similarities or correspondences between unlike entities and processes, so that we can see, experience, think and communicate about one thing in terms of another – our lives as journeys, our minds as machines, our emotions as external forces, people as animals, inanimate objects as people, and so on. This expands our ability to feel, reason and communicate in ways that are characteristically human
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Metaphor, impoliteness, and offence in online communication
No full textWhat role might figurative language play in utterances that are designed to threaten or cause offence? In this chapter we tackle this question, against the backdrop of social practices around computer-mediated communication (CMC), by combining evidence in metaphor and impoliteness research. This combination is necessary because of the relative absence of studies investigating the role of metaphor in offence more broadly
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Using metaphor in healthcare : physical health
No full textAs shown throughout this volume, metaphors are regularly used to talk and think about experiences that are subjective, complex and sensitive in terms of experiences that are less subjective, simpler and more concrete. Health and illness, and the emotions associated with them, are among the experiences that we often talk about through metaphors. As is the case more generally, these metaphors tend to rely on perceived similarities between different kinds of experiences. For example, the metaphorical use of ‘battle’ in ‘she died after a long battle with cancer’ relies on the perception of a similarity between being ill with cancer and fighting in a war: both experiences are difficult and potentially life-threatening, both require perseverance, and so on. However, as our use of the term ‘perceived’ similarity suggests, metaphors do not reflect objectively given similarities, but can create similarities between unlike things: they can reflect, convey and reinforce different ways of seeing and experiencing different aspects of our lives. In the terms used in Conceptual Metaphor Theory (see Chapter 1), the choice of different source domains ‘frames’ the target domain in different ways, highlighting some aspects and backgrounding others (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Ritchie 2013)
“One gives bad compliments about me, and the other one is telling me to do things” – (Im)Politeness and power in reported interactions between voice-hearers and their voices
Full text linkApplying corpus-based discourse analysis to enhance understanding of barriers to palliative and end of life care provision in general practice.
No full textThe population is ageing, and with advances in medical treatments and technology people are living longer, often with increasingly complex, life-limiting multi-morbidity. People die not from one condition, but following a period of chronic illness, and identification of the ‘end of life’ phase is becoming an increasing challenge (NHS England, 2014; Public Health England, 2013; Murtagh et al., 2014). In the UK, the delivery of more equitable, high-quality palliative and end of life care (PEOLC) is an ongoing priority for the National Health Service, with general practitioners (GPs) and the multidisciplinary team (MDT) having a fundamental role in providing medical care for patients dying ‘in the community’, that is, outside of healthcare institutions. Recognized barriers to the provision of good PEOLC include system-wide concerns such as inconsistent use of relevant terminology in policy and practice, as well as front-line clinical practice concerns such as fractured continuity of care. ..
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Using a comparative corpus-assisted approach to study health and illness discourses across domains: the case of postnatal depression (PND) in lay, medical and media texts
Full text linkIn this chapter we highlight the benefits of a comparative corpus-assisted discourse approach to health communication (Jaworska and Kinloch 2018) by examining discursive representations of postnatal depression (PND) in lay, medical and media accounts. PND is an important case to study; it is a highly stigmatised condition which in the UK affects 10-15 in every 100 women and is the leading cause of maternal death (Oates 2003; NHS 2016).
Our study endeavours to contribute to a better understanding of the lived experience of PND through a comparative analysis of discourses about the condition produced by mothers in an online discussion forum, the medical profession and the UK print media. We focus specifically on the ways in which the condition – PND – is discursively constructed across different types of texts and the extent to which medical and media discourses around PND are re-contextualised by mothers and how mothers position themselves vis-à-vis the social stigma. To this end, we examine the use of the acronym PND (as opposed to the term postnatal depression) in three large data sets (corpora) including: 1) lay narratives sourced from Mumsnet, 2) information by clinicians for lay people and 3) articles about PND from British newspapers. Analysis of a large dataset of language on a particular topic has clear potential benefits for the study of health language, particularly in gathering evidence of discursive practices around a particular user group or condition
Empathy displays in Dutch chat counselling:Showcasing a microanalysis of online data
No full textWyke Stommel Joyce Lamerichs With the advent of the internet and computer-mediated communication in the early 1990s people have turned to digital environments for health-related issues. Online communities and support groups for a plethora of conditions and diseases were launched in the early days and professional-led platforms joined later. These online forums were considered low-threshold services, believed to attract people who were not ready to seek help from a professional. Online professional services are also easily accessible, especially when they are anonymous. Online counselling has been a growing branch of the healthcare tree for roughly two decades (Norcross, Hedges and Prochaska, 2002) . Professionals are increasingly open to offering online therapy, even though reservations persist (Cipolletta and Mocellin, 2017) . Online counselling has been found to be beneficial for various target groups varying from children (Fukkink and Hermanns, 2009) to partners of alcoholics (Wilson et al. , 2017) . With..
Metaphor and the representation of scientific issues : climate change in online and print media
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