Epistemic confronts in the social perception of aphasias and alzheimer's disease through metaphors

• Autor(a) principal: Morato, Edwiges Maria
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Outros Autores: Freitas, Nathália Luiz de
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Cadernos de Estudos Linguísticos
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.sbu.unicamp.br/ojs/index.php/cel/article/view/8673335
• topic: Metáfora; Afasia; Alzheimer; Cognición social; Doença de Alzheimer; Metáfora; Afasia; Cognição social; Metaphor; Aphasia; Alzheimer's disease; Social cognition

This text presents reflections resulting from the ongoing development of the project “O papel das metáforas e dos frames na ancoragem da referência discursiva - a conceptualização das afasias e da Doença de Alzheimer” – FAPESP processo 2020/00405-4 (The role of metaphors and frames in anchoring discursive reference - the conceptualization of aphasias and Alzheimer's Disease). The approach of this article, whose theoretical-methodological assumptions are affiliated to post-Lakoffian perspectives of the study of metaphor in use (such as Cameron, 2008; Charteris-Black, 2004; Kövecses, 2005; Vereza, 2007; Silva, 2015; Semino et al ., 2016) is in two among three objectives of the study: (i) to analyze, through metaphorical referential expressions, the conceptualization of aphasia and Alzheimer's Disease (AD) by lay people, diagnosed individuals and specialists (physicians and therapists); and (ii) identify conceptualization trends of these clinical conditions regarding the main epistemic frames that seek to explain them, and their variations, changes or interrelationships. Based on the construction of a corpus in Brazilian Portuguese of metaphorical referential expressions extracted from authentic linguistic-interactional data from academic works by researchers in the field of Neurolinguistics at the Institute of Language Studies, State University of Campinas and from the collections of the COGITES research group (Cognition, Interaction and Meaning), metaphorical occurrences were analyzed in situations of language use and in certain discursive spheres (semi-directed interviews and conversations with aphasic individuals and those diagnosed with AD, diagnostic meetings of case studies). By means of the analysis carried out, it was possible to observe similarities and differences in the conceptualization of different social actors about aphasia and AD, as well as about sick individuals. In general, the metaphor acts as a powerful linguistic-cognitive resource for conceptualizing the disease, as already pointed out by many authors. In this study, the metaphor indicates trends of (re)construction of meanings associated with pathologies as a (new) experience to be understood and framed in epistemic and socio-cognitive terms, with impacts and challenges of different orders.