Metaphor and the Representations of Health and Illness among the Semai Indigenous Community in Malaysia

Bibliographic Data

ID21185374
AuthorsLisbeth Sinan Lendik (0000-0003-3666-2295, Universiti Putra Malaysia), Mei-Yuit Chan (0000-0002-4726-9117, Universiti Putra Malaysia), Mei Yuit Chan, Sumathi Renganathan (0000-0002-6052-2922, Universiti Teknologi Petronas), Ngee Thai Yap (0000-0001-8672-7128, Universiti Putra Malaysia)
Year2017
Volume17
Issue4
Pages61-83
Publication date2017-11-29
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGEMA Online Journal of Language Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1675-8021 • E-ISSN: 2550-2131
PublisherPenerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM Press) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.17576/gema-2017-1704-05
OpenAlexW2769677108
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited6

Diverse methods and approaches have been utilised in researching the cultural bases of health, illness and wellbeing. Understanding the cultural representation of health and illness of particular communities becomes urgent especially when the community concerned is underserved in healthcare. In this project, we sought to examine the representations of health and illness by members of the Semai indigenous community through the use of metaphor analysis, a qualitative method in applied linguistics that attend to how people use language in real-world discourses to understand their conceptualisations of abstract ideas and emotions. From semi-structured interviews with the indigenous Semai people in a village in Malaysia, metaphors of health and illness were identified from the oral stories told by participants. Metaphors were identified and analysed following Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) conceptual metaphor theory that explains how people understand one idea in a conceptual domain through accessing resources in another conceptual domain. The results show that universal metaphors are dominant in representing embodied experiences while culturally influenced metaphors are important as vehicles of expression derived from their environment and folk beliefs. We argue that while culturally influenced metaphors may mark the participants as strange in their ways of thinking, a closer look at their underlying frameworks finds that they connect with universal bases that are intrinsic to all human experience. Understanding conceptual metaphors can contribute to the expansion of the locus of shared understanding between healthcare providers and the communities they serve

Conceptual metaphor · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Health care · Indigenous · Linguistics · Metaphor · Political science · Sociology · Sociology of health and illness · English Language Learning and Teaching · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Linguistic, Cultural, and Literary Studies · Psychology

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