A Corpus-based Investigation of Conceptual and Pictorial Metaphor of Depression in MD and BPD Patients’ Discourse | ||||
| CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education | ||||
| Article 16, Volume 66, Issue 1, January 2019, Page 393-419 PDF (1011.69 K) | ||||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||||
| DOI: 10.21608/opde.2019.133246 | ||||
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| Abstract | ||||
| This paper examines the representation of major depression (MD) and bipolar disorder (BPD) from a cognitive linguistic perspective. Investigating psychological disorders linguistically has been under the water for almost a decade now, with the pioneering study of Eynon (2002). Many recent linguistic studies have approached mental health discourse, in an attempt to better understand and deal with various physiological and psychological problems. Major depressive disorder (MD) “is a common illness worldwide, with more than 300 million people affected…is the leading cause of disability worldwide, and at its worst, [it] can lead to suicide.” (“WHO”). On the other hand, Bipolar disorder is one of the fast spreading psychological disorders. In fact, according to the World Health Organization, bipolar disorder is the sixth leading cause of disability in the world. Working with depression patients and helping them explore and identify their disorder is the first step towards treatment. The present paper is a depression-corpus-based analysis of the verbal and visual discourse of patients to investigate how depression is framed linguistically, drawing on Lakoff and Johnson’s seminal Conceptual Metaphor Theory (1980) and Forceville (2008) Pictorial Metaphor Theory. The verbal data show four main patterns of conceptual metaphors: DEPRESSION IS DISEASE, DEPRESSION IS COMPANION, DEPRESSION IS ABYSS, and DEPRESSION IS ENEMY. Visually, DEPRESSION is framed as ENEMY, DEATH and ABYSS. Psychiatrists and psychologists may find the findings of this work helpful as they continue to study mental health discourse. | ||||
| Keywords | ||||
| major depression; bipolar depression disorder; conceptual metaphor theory; pictorial metaphor theory; cognitive linguistics | ||||
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