Get the metaphor right! Cancer treatment metaphors in the English and Spanish press

Abstract

This study explores the use of metaphor in the presentation of cancer therapies in a corpus of 300 popularisation articles in four quality newspapers, The Guardian, The Times, El País and El Mundo, in the English and Spanish press. More specifically, it seeks to investigate the ways in which currently available cancer treatments are portrayed as opposed to those still under development. Metaphorically used words were identified primarily according to the ‘Metaphor Identification Procedure’ MIP developed by the Pragglejaz Group (2007) but also taking into account the developments presented by the more elaborated procedure MIPVU. The analysis revealed three major source domains that conceptualise cancer treatment: WEAPON, GARMENT and FOOD AND COCKTAILS. Contextual analysis showed that these metaphors are often used by both journalists and scientists with persuasive and evaluative functions in the text.