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Part of
Performing Metaphoric Creativity across Modes and Contexts
Edited by Laura Hidalgo-Downing and Blanca Kraljevic Mujic
[Figurative Thought and Language 7] 2020
► pp. 221–248

Chapter 10
Creative journeys

Metaphors of metastasis in press popularization articles

| University of Cantabria

This chapter draws on the notion of creative recontextualization to explore how metastasis is recontextualized through metaphor in a bilingual English-Spanish corpus of press popularization articles on cancer. The quantitative and qualitative analysis revealed marked cross-cultural differences. Thus, while the English subcorpus presents the process with little metaphorical aid, the Spanish subcorpus displays a wider array of images involving movement. Nevertheless, the use of metaphor in both subcorpora generally involved a creative recontextualization of the source domains found in more specialized scientific genres for metastasis (invasion and colonization, dissemination and migration) through the ‘opening up’ of theory-constitutive metaphors. In addition, a particularly creative strategy was the personification of biological entities, which were vilified and portrayed as participating in delinquent activities.

Keywords: metaphor, creative recontextualization, popularization articles, metastasis, cancer
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Metastasis and its metaphors in specialized genres
  • 3.Materials and methods
  • 4.Quantitative and qualitative analysis of metaphors of metastasis
    • 4.1Invasion and colonization metaphors
    • 4.2 dissemination metaphors
    • 4.3Migration metaphors
    • 4.4Journey metaphors
  • 5.Personification
  • 6.Creative exploitation of metastasis metaphors
    • 6.1Intertextual metaphors in the English subcorpus
    • 6.2Creative patterning in the Spanish subcorpus
      • 6.2.1Metaphorical clusters in the reporting of metastasis
      • 6.2.2Creative elaboration and extension in the Spanish press
  • 7.Conclusions
  • References
Published online: 29 May 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.7.10wil
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