Cover not available
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
References (63)
References
Anthony, L. (2019). AntConc (Version 3.5.8) [Computer Software]. Tokyo: Waseda University. Online: [URL]
Becker, G. (1999). Disrupted lives: How people create meaning in a chaotic world. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bleakley, A. (2017). Thinking with metaphors in medicine: The state of the art. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boyd, R. (1993). Metaphor and theory change: What is ‘metaphor’ a metaphor for? In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd ed., pp. 481–532). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, T. (2003). Making truth: Metaphor in science. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Cameron, L. & Low, G. D. (2004). Figurative variation in episodes of educational talk and text. European Journal of English Studies, 8(3), 355–373. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cai, X. (2006). Chinese language dictionary. Taiwan: Chinese Culture Association.Google Scholar
Chard, R. (1994). Rituals and Scriptures of the stove cults. In D. Johnson (Ed.), Ritual and scripture in Chinese popular religion: Five studies (Publications of the Chinese Popular Culture Project, 3) (pp. 3–54). Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies Publications.Google Scholar
Conti, A. A. (2018). Historical evolution of the concept of health in Western medicine. Acta Bio-medica: Atenei Parmensis, 89(3), 352–354. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Degner, L. F., Hack, T., O’Neil, J. & Kristjanson, L. J. (2003). A new approach to eliciting meaning in the context of breast cancer. Cancer Nursing, 26(3), 169–178. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deignan, A. (2008). Corpus linguistics and metaphor. In R. Gibbs, Jr. (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of metaphor and thought (pp. 280–294). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deignan, A., Littlemore, J. & Semino, E. (2013). Figurative language, genre and register. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Demjén, Z., Semino, E., Hardie, A., Payne, S. & Rayson, P. (2018). Metaphor, cancer and the end of life: A corpus-based study. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Demjén, Z., Semino, E. & Koller, V. (2016). Metaphors for ‘good’ and ‘bad’ deaths: A health professional view. Metaphor and the Social World, 6(1), 1–19.Google Scholar
Duanmu, S. (2013). How many Chinese words have elastic length? In G. Peng & S. Feng, Eastward flows the great river: Festschrift in honor of Prof. William S-Y. Wang on his 80th birthday (pp. 1–14). Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press.Google Scholar
Dubos, R. (1959). The mirage of health. New York: Harper & Brothers.Google Scholar
Genette, G. (2005). Essays in aesthetics. London: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Gibbs, R. W. (2021). Important discoveries in the study of metaphor in world Englishes. In M. Callies & M. Degani (Eds.), Metaphor in language and culture across world Englishes (pp. 15–32). New York: Bloomsbury. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goatly, A. (2007). Washing the brain: Metaphor and hidden ideology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goddard, C. & Wierzbicka, A. (2014). Sweet, hot, hard, heavy, rough and sharp: Physical quality words in cross-linguistic perspective. In C. Goddard, & A. Wierzbicka, Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures (pp. 55–79). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gök, A. & Kara, A. (2022). Individuals’ conceptions of COVID-19 pandemic through metaphor analysis. Current Psychology, 411, 449–458. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grady, J. E. (1997). Foundations of meaning: Primary metaphors and primary scenes. PhD Dissertation. Berkeley: University of California.
Hanne, M. (2015). Diagnosis and Metaphor. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 58(1), 35–52. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hui, E. (1999). Concepts of health and disease in traditional Chinese medicine. In H. Coward & P. Ratanakul, A cross-cultural dialogue on health care ethics (pp.34–46). Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.Google Scholar
Kleinman, A. (1995): Writing at the margin. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kövecses, Z. (2005). Metaphor in culture: Universality and variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. ([1980] 2003). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lang, J. (2020). Neological cancer metaphors in the Chinese cyberspace: Uses and social meanings. Chinese Language and Discourse, 11(2), 261–286. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Low, G., Littlemore, J. & Koester, A. (2008). Metaphor use in three UK university lectures. Applied Linguistics, 29(3), 428–455. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lu, L. & Ahrens, K. (2008). Ideological influence on BUILDING metaphors in Taiwanese presidential speeches. Discourse and Society, 191, 383–408. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ma, D., Wang, S., Shi, Y., Ni, S., Tang, M. & Xu, A. (2021). The development of traditional Chinese medicine. Journal of Traditional Chinese Medical Sciences, 8(S1), S1–S9. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
MacArthur, F., Krennmayr, T. & Littlemore, J. (2015). How basic is “understanding is seeing” when reasoning about knowledge? Asymmetric uses of sight Metaphors in office hours consultations in English as academic lingua franca. Metaphor and Symbol, 30(3), 184–217. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ni, M. S. (1995). The Yellow Emperor’s classic of medicine (English translation). Boston: Shambala.Google Scholar
Nie, J. B. (2011). Medical ethics in China: A transcultural interpretation. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Olza, I., Koller, V., Ibarretxe-Antuñano, I., Pérez Sobrino, P. & Semino, E. (2021). The #ReframeCovid initiative: From Twitter to society via metaphor. Metaphor and the Social World, 11(1), 98–120. Online: [URL]. DOI logo
Palma, H. A. (2018). Metaphors in science: A change of perspective. In J. Horne (Ed.), Philosophical perceptions on logic and order (pp. 242–254). IGI Global. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Panzeri, F., Di Paola, S. & Domaneschi, F. (2021). Does the COVID-19 war metaphor influence reasoning? PloS ONE, 16(4), e0250651. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pérez-Sobrino, P., Semino, E., Ibarretxe-Antuñano, I., Koller, V. & Olza, I. (2022). Acting like a hedgehog in times of pandemic: Metaphorical creativity in the #ReframeCovid collection. Metaphor and Symbol, 37(2), 127–139. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Porter, R. (1997). The greatest benefit to mankind: A medical history of humanity from antiquity to the present. London: Fontana.Google Scholar
(2006). The Cambridge history of medicine. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pragglejaz Group (2007). MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse. Metaphor and Symbol, 22(1), 1–39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Raphals, L. (2020). “Chinese philosophy and Chinese medicine”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2020 Edition). In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), Online: [URL]
Reijnierse, G., Burgers, C., Krennmayr, T. & Steen, G. (2018). DMIP: A method for identifying potentially deliberate metaphor in language use. Corpus Pragmatics, 21, 129–147. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ross, S. D. (1994). The limits of language. Fordham: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Semino, E. (2021). “Not soldiers but fire-fighters” – Metaphors and Covid-19. Health Communication, 36(1), 50–58. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Semino, E. & Demjén, Z. (2017). The cancer card: Metaphor, intimacy, and humour in online interactions about the experience of cancer. In B. Hampe (Ed.), Metaphor: Embodied cognition and discourse (pp. 181–199). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Semino, E., Demjén, Z. & Demmen, J. (2018). An integrated approach to metaphor and framing in cognition, discourse, and practice, with an application to metaphors for cancer. Applied Linguistics, 39(5), 625–645.Google Scholar
Sharifian, F. (2014). Conceptual metaphor in intercultural communication between speakers of Aboriginal English and Australian English. In A. Mussolff, & F. MacArthur. (Eds.) Metaphor and intercultural communication (pp. 117–130). London: Bloomsbury Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silvano, G. (2021). A brief history of Western medicine. Journal of Traditional Chinese Medical Sciences, 8(S), S10–S16. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smolowitz, J., Honig, J. & Reinisch, C. (2010). Writing DNP clinical case narratives: demonstrating and evaluating competency in comprehensive care. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Sontag, S. (1979). Illness as metaphor. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
(1989). Illness as metaphor and AIDS and its metaphors. New York: Picador/Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Stanley, B. L., Zanin, A. C., Avalos, B. L., Tracy, S. J. & Town, S. (2021). Collective emotion during collective trauma: A metaphor analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic. Qualitative Health Research, 31(10), 1890–1903. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Steen, G., Dorst, L., Herrmann, J., Kaal, A., Krennmayr, T. & Pasma, T. (2010). A method for linguistic metaphor identification. From MIP to MIPVU. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stibbe, A. (1996). The metaphoric construction of illness in Chinese medicine. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 71, 177–188.Google Scholar
Taylor, C. & Kidgell, J. (2021). Flu-like pandemics and metaphor pre-covid: A corpus investigation. Discourse, Context and Media, 411, 100503. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Veith, I. & Barnes, L. (2016). The Yellow Emperor’s classic of internal medicine. Oakland, California: University of California Press. Online: [URL]
Wang, B., Lu, X., Hsu, C. C., Lin, E. & Ai, H. (2019). Linguistic metaphor identification in Chinese. In S. Nacey, A. Dorst, T. Krennmayr & W. Reijnierse, Metaphor identification in multiple languages: MIPVU around the world (converging evidence in language and communication research (CELCR) (pp. 247–266). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wang, J. (2002). Recent progress in corpus linguistics in China. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 6(2), 281–304. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wicke, P. & Bolognesi, M. M. (2020). Framing COVID-19: How we conceptualize and discuss the pandemic on Twitter. PloS ONE, 15(9), e0240010. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wierzbicka, A. (1997). Understanding cultures through their key words: English, Russian, Polish, German, Japanese. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Yu, N. (1995). Metaphorical expressions of anger and happiness in English and Chinese. Metaphor and symbolic activity, 10(2), 59–92. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1998). The contemporary theory of metaphor: A perspective from Chinese. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Magaña, Dalia
2024. Language in Cancer Discourse. In Reference Module in Social Sciences, DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 18 october 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.