Illness and the Use of Metaphor in Shaping Our Culture

In their article, Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson explore the way in which metaphors pervade much of language. They talk about how metaphors are shaped by culture, providing different meaning depending on the context. The metaphors lose value without a consensus on their meaning created through culture.

For example, take illness metaphors. Not the metaphors used to describe illness, but rather the metaphors created through the use of ‘illness’.

Illness is often used as a metaphor for a negative entity attacking, i.e. ‘Tibet was plagued by communism’ or ‘He was the cancer of our society.” In order for these metaphors to ring true, it must be assumed that people interpret ‘cancer’ and ‘plague’ as a negative threat, to be avoided.

That is not to say that illness is something that people should desire. However, ideas like this could possibly contribute to modern day views towards people inflicted with illness, as people to avoided. The most obvious example is AIDS. Although through education, we have made a lot of progress in changing peoples negative attitudes towards it, there is still a negative stigmatism attached to AIDS patients as something to be avoided.

Samuel Butler commented on illness and the attitude of society towards the sick in his novel Erewhon. In Erewhon, the ill are treated as criminals, and the criminals are treated as if they were ill.

Our society may not be so extreme, however that does not mean that negative attitudes don’t exist. I’m reminded of a time when I used to work at Subway, and one of my co-workers wanted me to bleach her hands because she made a sandwich for someone with AIDS.

So although culture does create the meaning in metaphors, it is also worth exploring the way metaphors shape culture and normalize ideas. Sickness is tragic, but it does not mean those inflicted with it should be avoided simply because they are ill.