Violence metaphors for cancer – such as ‘she is fighting cancer’ or ‘she lost her battle against cancer’ – are highly common in discourse about cancer. At the same time, these metaphors are controversial and contested. The present dissertation sheds novel light on the metaphors’ contentious status by conducting a close analysis of standpoints and arguments that are put forward against these metaphors in public discourse. The analysis is guided by the pragma-dialectical approach to argument analysis and approaches to metaphor analysis that are grounded in cognitive linguistics.
In this dissertation, the author first examines how different types of argumentation in resistance to violence metaphors for cancer can relate to specific features of the contested metaphors. Subsequently, she examines the nature of different resistance standpoints and the dimensions of metaphor use these standpoints may be targeted at. The second part of the dissertation is focused on the analysis of arguments that are put forward against implications of violence metaphors for cancer, as well as the ways in which these implications can be countered by means of metaphor extension.
Together, the dissertation’s findings demonstrate the multifacetedness of argumentative resistance against violence metaphors, and how such resistance can take different forms depending on a protagonist’s precise point of view and their arguments for objecting to a particular (property of) metaphor. Furthermore, the dissertation demonstrates the value of combining theoretical and empirical knowledge on argumentation and metaphor in order to gain a better understanding of the ways in which metaphors are received and critically reflected upon.
