Metaphors of mental illnessa corpus-based approach analysing first-person accounts of patients and mental health professionals

  1. Marta Coll-Florit 1
  2. Antoni Oliver 1
  3. Salvador Climent 1
  1. 1 Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
    info

    Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

    Barcelona, España

    ROR https://ror.org/01f5wp925

Journal:
Cultura, lenguaje y representación = Culture, language and representation: revista de estudios culturales de la Universitat Jaume I = cultural studies journal of Universitat Jaume I

ISSN: 1697-7750

Year of publication: 2021

Issue: 25

Pages: 85-104

Type: Article

DOI: 10.6035/CLR.2021.25.5 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openOpen access editor

More publications in: Cultura, lenguaje y representación = Culture, language and representation: revista de estudios culturales de la Universitat Jaume I = cultural studies journal of Universitat Jaume I

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Abstract

In this paper we describe the building, manual annotation and analysis of a balanced corpus to assess conceptual metaphors on mental illness as used in Spanish blogger writing by patients and mental health professionals. The corpus was structured as eight subgroups: four patient subgroups (composed of persons who declared having been diagnosed with major depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or obsessive-compulsive disorder) and four mental health professional subgroups (psychiatrists, psychologists,social educators, nurses). The quantitative analysis identified similarities and differences between groups regarding the volume of metaphors produced and the topics linguistically expressed through metaphors. The most frequent metaphors used by each major group, patients and professionals, were qualitatively analysed, with the principal findings showing a set of source domains used to conceptualize all four severe mental disorders, thus pointing to a common conceptualization of mental suffering irrespective of the specific diagnosis, and two major types of metaphors, WAR and JOURNEY, used by all subgroups of patients and professionals to talk about their first-hand experiences.

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Funding information

1 This research was conducted in the framework of MOMENT: Metaphors of severe mental disorders. Discourse analysis of affected people and mental health professionals, a project funded by the Spanish National Research Agency (Agencia Estatal de Investigaci?n, AEI) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), within the Spanish Government?s National Programme for Research Aimed at the Challenges of Society. Ref. FFI2017-86969-R (AEI/ERDF, EU). We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers whose comments and suggestions helped to improve this manuscript.

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