Breast cancer, discourse and cognition: metaphor and image schemas of the disease and its participants in Peru

Domínguez Chenguayen F.J.; Conchacalle Cáceres D.I. · Cultura, Lenguaje y Representacion (2024) · DOI: 10.6035/clr.7866

Resumen

Since breast cancer is an important condition in quantitative terms that puts the life and health of Peruvian women at risk (Posso et al., 2015), it is advisable to go beyond objective medical facts (e. g., use of drugs, surgeries, etc.), and also evaluate how the female population of said country experiences, understands, expresses and relates to the disease. Along these lines, this work seeks to analyze the way in which the Peruvian woman experiences and conceives her illness, as well as the way in which she experiences it and faces it day by day. To do this, we study the metaphors and image schemes involved in the discursive construction of the disease from a set of real testimonies from Peruvian women who, after having recovered or in the course of their recovery, decided to tell their stories to inspire and provide support to other women who still suffer from the condition. As a result, the analyzed discourses discover a series of specific representations in which women configure their experience around the disease through conceptual domains involved with war and people, but also with certain rudimentary structures that configure their way of understanding cancer. such as containment, locomotion and force schemas.

Instituciones: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos; Universidad Tecnológica del Perú