活动安排：

Metaphorical Descriptions of Pain on a Patient Online Forum: Pushing the Boundaries of Cognitive Linguistics

  Pain is notoriously difficult to communicate in language, especially literal language. Sufferers therefore often use figurative language to express what their pain feels like. In this session, I present an analysis of creative metaphors and similes used to describe pain sensations on an online forum for people with Trigeminal Neuralgia (henceforth TN) – a condition that causes disabling and overwhelming episodes of pain in the face. I first consider the ways in which a cognitive linguistic approach to metaphor can account for the expressions identified in the data. I then point out the challenges that this kind of data poses to current cognitive linguistic accounts of metaphor. Finally, I reflect on the implications of my findings for the systematic analysis of metaphor in discourse and for the potential contribution of such analysis to the understanding of the lived experience of TN, and to the development of better ways of catering for the needs of people with TN.

Language and Mind in Narrative

The linguistic representation of characters’ minds in narrative has received considerable attention both in Stylistics and Narratology. In this talk I combine stylistic analysis with the computer-aided methods of Corpus Linguistics to analyse two narratives that foreground the workings of the narrator’s mind: Mark Haddon’s novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003), whose narrator is usually attributed an autism-spectrum disorder; and the chapters narrated by Henry Cockburn, who has a diagnosis of schizophrenia, in Henry’s Demons – Living with Schizophrenia: a Father’s and Son’s Story (2011). I show how a linguistic approach can help to account for readers’ reactions to both books, and hence for how these narratives play a part in public perceptions of conditions that are often stigmatised or poorly understood. In the case of Henry’s Demons, I also show the potential contribution of a linguistic approach to a better understanding of the ‘lived experience’ of psychosis, which can be relevant to diagnosis and care.