Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
Department of Languages, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden.
Med Humanit. 2020 Sep;46(3):267-277. doi: 10.1136/medhum-2019-011656. Epub 2019 Aug 13.
Living with a life-limiting cancer illness can entail a turmoil of feelings such as constant fear of loss, suffering and dying. Because patients live longer with life-limiting illness, there is a need for enhanced understanding of how people make sense of and cope with the complicated aspects that this life situation brings on. In this article, we explore how bloggers with advanced cancer use metaphors as ways of making sense of their experiences. Our study is theoretically grounded in Conceptual Metaphor Theory, where metaphors are seen as a powerful phenomenon that both reflects and affects our thinking. The data consist of a corpus of blogs written in Swedish by individuals with advanced cancer, and the findings from our linguistic metaphor analysis are consistently interpreted against the backdrop of literature on coping. Our study thus highlights the intersection of linguistic metaphor analysis and psychological theories of coping by illustrating the many and complex functions metaphors can have as part of sense-making processes. Our hermeneutic approach enables us to show some differences among the three most pervasive metaphor domains in our material, battle, journey and imprisonment: the journey and imprisonment domains are more flexible than the battle domain in terms of the different kinds of coping strategies that are actualised by the bloggers' use of metaphors. One particular finding from our analysis is the way in which the bloggers make use of metaphors to compartmentalise experiences and emotions. Our contention is that careful attention to the metaphors used by patients can improve communication in healthcare and enhance understanding of the complex role language use plays in coping processes more generally. By highlighting the relation between metaphor use and coping, our analysis also provides a way to discuss coping strategies based on the patient's own use of language.
患有绝症会让人感到恐惧、痛苦和死亡，这种感觉会让人感到不安。由于患者患有绝症的时间更长，因此需要加强对人们如何理解和应对这种生活状况带来的复杂问题的理解。在本文中，我们探讨了患有晚期癌症的博主如何使用隐喻来理解自己的经历。我们的研究理论基础是概念隐喻理论，该理论认为隐喻是一种强大的现象，既能反映又能影响我们的思维。数据由一组用瑞典语撰写的患有晚期癌症的个人博客组成，我们的语言隐喻分析结果与应对文献的背景一致。因此，我们的研究通过说明隐喻作为意义建构过程一部分的多种复杂功能，突出了语言隐喻分析和应对的心理理论之间的交集。我们的解释学方法使我们能够展示我们材料中三个最常见的隐喻领域（战斗、旅程和监禁）之间的一些差异：就博主使用隐喻实现的不同应对策略而言，旅程和监禁领域比战斗领域更具灵活性。我们分析中的一个特别发现是博主利用隐喻来划分经验和情绪的方式。我们认为，仔细关注患者使用的隐喻可以改善医疗保健中的沟通，并更好地理解语言在应对过程中的复杂作用。通过突出隐喻使用和应对之间的关系，我们的分析还提供了一种基于患者自己使用语言的方式来讨论应对策略的方法。
