Using Metaphor in the Discourse of Cancer

Medical specialists, patients and their families, and the media use descriptive language to express and transfer the effect and experience of cancer and conceptual metaphors have an important role in understanding different aspects of conceptualizing feelings and emotional experiences. In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphors play an important role in human cognitive system and unlike the past, they are not restricted to literature and are not considered just the tools for aesthetic purposes of the texts. Using the cognitive linguistic approach, the present paper tries to investigate conceptual metaphors used in medical papers about cancer written in Persian language. The results show that some medical concepts of cancer are expressed through conceptual metaphors and Persian speakers use different source domains such as “cancer is battlefield”, “cancer is journey”, etc. to express medical concepts of cancer and these metaphors may have positive or negative effects on the common opinions about cancer.