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Article published In:
Metaphor in Mental Healthcare
Edited by Dennis Tay
[Metaphor and the Social World 10:2] 2020
► pp. 233–252

Negotiating embodied space in anxiety narratives

| King’s College London
In recent years, studies from social/cultural geography and social psychology have shown the importance of the subjective experience of space in anxiety disorders. This study investigates how lived space in anxiety is discursively negotiated in interactional narratives, with a focus on the co-construction of time, physical space and epistemic modality, and the ways in which metaphors contribute to the representation of spatial experience. The data are two case studies taken from television programmes in which a figure in the public eye is being interviewed about their experiences of anxiety. The analysis showcases two distinct kinds of lived space in anxiety, one in which the self is continually moving through a space experienced as too expansive, and another in which other people/entities are moving around the self in a space experienced as too small. Both experiences involve spatial responses that serve to bring some relief from anxiety. The analysis also has methodological implications by exemplifying how metaphors feed into spatial gestalts that are collaboratively constructed as narratives unfold in situated interaction.
Keywords: spatial experience, spatial gestalts, anxiety, interactional narratives, situated interaction
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Deixis in discourse
  • 3.Metaphor in interaction
  • 4.Cognitive linguistics, interaction and small stories
  • 5.Methods
    • 5.1Data selection
    • 5.2Data analysis
  • 6.Analysis
    • 6.1Narrative one: The self as moving
      • 6.1.1Part one
      • 6.1.2Part two
      • 6.1.3Part three
    • 6.2Narrative two: Movement within the surrounding space
      • 6.2.1Part one
      • 6.2.2Part two
  • 7.Discussion
    • 7.1Embodied space in anxiety
    • 7.2Interaction, metaphor and deictic space
  • 8.Concluding remarks
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 13 November 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/msw.00005.kna
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