Enemies or obstacles?
Metaphors of war and journey in mental health discourse
This study examines the use of metaphors of war and journey in a million-word corpus of Spanish-language blogs written by patients with severe mental disorders and by mental health professionals. Quantitative results indicate that both metaphors are more prevalent among patients than professionals, supporting the idea that they are mostly used in this context for communicating complex and emotionally intense experiences. From a qualitative perspective, our results show that patients use both metaphors to deal with exactly the same ontological elements of the situation (the disorder, symptoms, negative emotions, everyday problems, social prejudice, medical activity, people close to the patients and the patients themselves) but framing them differently. Further analysis shows that both metaphors have positive and negative uses in terms of emotions conveyed, empowerment and suitability for coping with the situation. In light of this, we conclude with a discussion of proposals promoting the positive uses of these metaphors.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Metaphors of war and journey: Uses and applications, and state of the art
- 3.Data and methods
- 4.Quantitative findings
- 5.Qualitative findings
- 5.1War metaphors
- 5.1.1Unspecific fight
- 5.1.2The war scenario: enemies (and some allies)
- 5.2
journey metaphors
- 5.2.1Moving forwards and backwards
- 5.2.2Main ontological elements: Places, obstacles, companions, burdens
- 6.Discussion
- 7.Conclusions
- Note
-
References
References (38)
References
Casares, J. (1981). Diccionario ideológico de la lengua española [Ideological dictionary of the Spanish language]. Gustavo Gili.
Climent, S., & Coll-Florit, M. (2017). La metáfora conceptual en el discurso psiquiátrico sobre la esquizofrenia [Conceptual metaphor in psychiatric discourse on schizophrenia]. Ibérica: Revista de la Asociación Europea de Lenguas para Fines Específicos (AELFE),
34
1, 187–208.
Coll-Florit, M., & Climent, S. (2019). A new methodology for conceptual metaphor detection and formulation in corpora. A case study on a mental health corpus. SKY Journal of Linguistics,
32
1, 43–74.
Coll-Florit, M., Climent, S., Sanfilippo, M. & Hernández, E. (2021a). Metaphors of depression. Studying first person accounts of life with depression published in blogs. Metaphor and Symbol,
36
(1), 1–19. 

Coll-Florit, M., Oliver, A. & Climent, S. (2021b). Metaphors of mental illness: a corpus-based approach analysing first-person accounts of patients and mental health professionals. Culture, Language and Representation,
25
1, 85–104. 

Correa-Urquiza, M., Pié, A., Coll-Florit, M., Hernández, E. & Climent, S. (2020). Orgullo loco y metáforas para una disidencia: un análisis lingüístico y simbólico [Mad pride and metaphors for dissidence: a linguistic and symbolic analysis]. Salud Colectiva, 161: e2886. 

Demjén, Z. (2015). Sylvia Plath and the Language of Affective States: Written Discourse and the Experience of Depression. Bloomsbury.
Demjén, Z., Marszalek, A., Semino, E., & Varese, F. (2019). Metaphor framing and distress in lived-experience accounts of voice-hearing. Psychosis,
11
(1), 16–27. 

Fainsilber, L., & Ortony, A. (1987). Metaphorical Uses of Language in the Expression of Emotions. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity,
2
(4), 239–250. 

Flusberg, S. J., Matlock, T., & Thibodeau, P. H. (2018). War metaphors in public discourse. Metaphor and Symbol,
33
(1), 1–18. 

Gibbs, R., & Franks, H. (2002). Embodied Metaphor in Women Narratives About Cancer. Health Communication,
14
(2), 139–165. 

Gustafsson, A. W., Hommerberg, C., & Sandgren, A. (2020). Coping by metaphors: the versatile function of metaphors in blogs about living with advanced cancer. Medical Humanities,
46
(3), 267–277. 

Hendricks, R. K., Demjén, Z., Semino, E., & Boroditsky, L. (2018). Emotional implications of metaphor: Consequences of metaphor framing for mindset about cancer. Metaphor and Symbol,
33
(4), 267–279. 

Hommerberg, C., Gustafsson, A. W., & Sandgren, A. (2020). Battle, Journey, Imprisonment and Burden: patterns of metaphor use in blogs about living with advanced cancer. BMC Palliative Care, 191, 59. 

Knapton, O. (2016). Dynamic conceptualizations of threat in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Language and Cognition,
8
(1), 1–31. 

Knapton, O. & Rundblad, G. (2018). Metaphor, discourse dynamics and register: Applications to written descriptions of mental health problems. Text & Talk,
38
(3), 389–410. 

Kövecses, Z. (1990). Emotion Concepts. New York: Springer-Verlag. 

Lakoff, G. (1992). The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor. In: Ortony, A., (Ed.). Metaphor and thought, 2nd ed. (pp. 202–251). Cambridge University Press.
Lakoff, G. (1996). Sorry, I am not myself today: The metaphor system for conceptualizing the self. In G. Fauconnier & E. Sweetser (Eds.), Spaces, worlds, and grammar (pp. 91–123). University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2003). Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press. (Originally published 1980). 

Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the Flesh. The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. Basic Books
Lakoff, G. & Turner, M. (1989). More than cool reason: A field guide to poetic metaphor. University of Chicago Press. 

Magaña, D. & Matlock, T. (2018). How Spanish speakers use metaphor to describe their experiences with cancer. Discourse & Communication.
12
(6), 627–644. 

McMullen, L. M. (2008). Putting it in context: Metaphor and psychotherapy. In: Gibbs, R. W. (Ed). The Cambridge handbook of metaphor and thought (pp.397–411). Cambridge University Press. 

Mould, T. J., Oades, L. G., & Crowe, T. P. (2010). The use of metaphor for understanding and managing psychotic experiences: A systematic review. Journal of Mental Health,
19
(3), 282–293. 

Ogarkova, A. & Soriano, C. (2014). Variation within universals: The ‘metaphorical profile’ approach to the study of ANGER concepts in English, Russian and Spanish. In: Musolff, A. & MacArthur, F. & Pagani, G. (Eds.). Metaphor and intercultural communication (pp. 93–116). Bloomsbury. 

Ortony, A. (1975). Why metaphors are necessary and not just nice. Educational Theory,
25
1, 45–53. 

Pragglejaz Group (2007). MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse. Metaphor and Symbol,
22
(1), 1–39. 

Seale, C. (2002). Cancer heroics: A study of news reports with particular reference to gender. Sociology, 36(1), 107–126. 

Schoeneman, T. J., Schoeneman, K. A., & Stallings, S. (2004). “The black struggle”: Metaphors of depression in Styron’s darkness visible. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology,
23
(3), 325–346. 

Semino, E. (2008). Metaphor in Discourse. Cambridge University Press.
Semino, E., Demjén, Z., Demmen, J., Koller, V., Payne, S., Hardie, A., & Rayson, P. (2017). The online use of Violence and Journey metaphors by patients with cancer, as compared with health professionals: a mixed methods study. BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care,
7
1, 60–66. 

Tay, D. (2016a). Finding the middle ground between therapist-centred and client-centred metaphor research in psychotherapy. In: O’Reilly, M. et al. (Eds). The Palgrave Handbook of Adult Mental Health (pp. 558–576). Palgrave Macmillan. 

Tay, D. (2016b). Using metaphor in healthcare: Mental health. In: Demjén, Z. & Semino, E. (Eds). The Routledge handbook of metaphor and language (pp. 371–385). Routledge.
Tay, D. (2021). Metaphor response categories and distribution between therapists and clients: a case study in the Chinese context. Journal of Constructivist Psychology,
34
(4), 378–394. 

World Health Organization (2018). International classification of diseases for mortality and morbidity statistics (11th Revision). Retrieved from: [URL]
Cited by (3)
Cited by three other publications
Foley, Jennifer
2024.
Lost in a sea of highlight reels: The use of social media and mental health metaphors in online health blogs.
Research in Corpus Linguistics 13:1
► pp. 26 ff.

Tao, Ran, Sang Jung Kim, Linqi Lu, Jiwon Kang & Douglas McLeod
2024.
Fighting Fire or Fighting War: Examining the Framing Effects of COVID-19 Metaphors.
Health Communication 39:10
► pp. 2026 ff.

Coll-Florit, Marta & Salvador Climent
2023.
Metaphor repositories: the case of the mental health metaphor dictionary.
Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 38:4
► pp. 1440 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 december 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.