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Article published In:
International Journal of Language and Culture
Vol. 9:2 (2022) ► pp.194–232

Metaphorical conceptualizations of cancer treatment in English and Chinese languages

| Hong Kong Metropolitan University
| University of Birmingham
Cross-cultural variation in the metaphors that are employed by healthcare researchers and professionals when discussing cancer care is a potential impediment to the sharing of expertise. By identifying patterns in the metaphorical language used in these contexts, we can reveal differences in how healthcare practitioners understand cancer and its treatments, thus enabling more effective intercultural communication in the field of oncology. To this end, the use of metaphor in collocations of the word ‘treatment’ in nursing journals published in British English, mainland Chinese, and Taiwanese Chinese is compared. Our analysis reveals differences regarding the agency given to the cancer, its treatment, and the patient; the interrelatedness of different bodily functions and organs; and the emphasis that is placed on the course of treatment as a whole as opposed to its individual stages.
Keywords: cross-cultural variation, intra-cultural variation, metaphor, cultural keywords, conceptualization of medical phenomena
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The metaphorical conceptualization of medical knowledge
    • 2.1Cross-linguistic variation in the use of metaphor to conceptualize medical knowledge
  • 3.Aims of the study and research questions
  • 4.The data and methodology
    • 4.1The data
    • 4.2Metaphor identification procedure
  • 5.An Overview of the metaphors identified in the three corpora
    • 5.1Differences between the three corpora in terms of their relative use of source-path-goal, animacy and war metaphor themes and their linguistic manifestations
      • 5.1.1The source-path-goal metaphor theme
      • 5.1.2The animacy metaphor theme
      • 5.1.3The war metaphor theme
    • 5.2Differences between the three corpora in terms of their relative use of the mechanical metaphor theme, sight-related metaphor and metonymy theme and the burden metaphor theme, and their linguistic manifestations
      • 5.2.1The mechanical metaphor theme
      • 5.2.2The sight-related metaphor and metonymy theme
      • 5.2.3The burden metaphor theme
    • 5.3Differences between the three corpora in terms of their relative use of the metaphors that involved cultural keywords
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 4 November 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.21051.cho
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