About This Special Issue
Scientific language, although oriented to objectivity, needs metaphors too (the idea of aggressive medical treatment as a war is just an example of it). Medical discourses love war metaphors. Instead, patients use to propose metaphors related to personal experiences of time and space. The main goal of this issue is to describe, in different discursive levels, how narratives (from medical sciences and from patients) are interconnected to each other and the kind of metaphors and other images they have in common. The intercultural context will be taken into consideration. It is interesting (and probably mandatory) to understand the role of institutions –and institutionalization processes- in the emergence and consolidation of scientific medical discourses. Once this is clear we can put the creation of metaphors -in the field of scientific discourses- in its right place. Another aspect to be explored is the one related to the different theories of metaphor, metaphoricity and even other rhetorical figures like metonymy or analogy, or some other more complex processes, like semantic association or connotation. All of them are deeply ingrained both in the medical-scientific discourses and in the personal narratives of the patients.
Keywords:
- Metaphors
- Metahoricity
- Discourse
- Science
- Narratives
- Interculturality