Dr Gavin Brookes: 'Metaphorical representations of dementia in British tabloids'

Описание: This talk (full title: 'Metaphorical representations of dementia in British tabloids: A corpus-based analysis') was given at the 2023 International Symposium for Communication in Healthcare, hosted by the Institute for Communication in Health Care at the Australian National University, 14-15 February 2023.

Abstract: In this talk I will examine the most frequent metaphors that are used to represent dementia in British tabloid newspapers over a ten-year period (2010-2019). The analysis takes a corpus-based approach to metaphor identification and analysis, utilising in particular the corpus linguistic technique of collocation analysis. Metaphors are considered in terms of the ‘targets’ they frame, which include the following aspects of dementia: (i.) prevalence; (ii.) causes; (iii.) symptoms and prognosis; (iv.) lived experience; (v.) responses. A range of metaphors are identified, with the tabloids exhibiting a particular preference for metaphors which construct dementia as an agentive and violent entity and people with dementia as passive victims, and which foreground preventative responses to dementia such as pharamacological intervention and individual behaviour change. It is argued that such metaphors have the potential to contribute to dementia stigma and place focus on preventing or eliminating dementia while backgrounding responses which may help people to ‘live well’ with dementia in the here-and-now. Metaphors which frame dementia as a companion or the experience of dementia as a journey are put forward as being potentially less stigmatising alternatives which better reflect the particularities of this complex public health issue.

Biography: Gavin Brookes is UKRI Future Leader Fellow in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University, UK. His research uses corpus linguistic, critical and multimodal approaches to analyse discourse, and he is particularly interested in topics such as health, gender and sexuality, and identity. He has published four books and over thirty journal articles on these topics. Gavin is Associate Editor of the International Journal of Corpus Linguistics and Co- Editor of the Corpus and Discourse book series.