The Role and Application of Metaphor in Preventing Breast Cancer Phobia

Background: Specialists, researchers, patients, and even their families usemetaphors to describe diseases. Metaphors are known to be central tools in bothcommunication and thinking. Crucially, even though many metaphors becomeconventionalized, metaphor choices are seldom neutral. Methods: This study investigated metaphors associated with breast cancerusing data from SID, magiran, and noormags databases.Results: The results showed that a number of medical concepts of cancer areexpressed using conceptual metaphors, and that Persian speakers use differentmetaphors to express medical concepts related to breast cancer, such as "breastcancer is bad", "breast cancer results in an inactive life", and so on. Thesemetaphors can have both positive and negative effects on common perceptions ofbreast cancer. The use of metaphors to address diseases, especially breast cancer,can cause feelings of fear and phobia among patients directly or indirectly, leadingto a lack of timely referral for early treatment, fear of stigma or loneliness anddeath.Conclusion: The findings of this research can inform experts, researchers anddoctors that the use of words can be both curative and destructive. Thus, theyshould consider this issue in their careers and statements.

کلیدواژه ها:

Breast cancer ، conceptual metaphors ، breast cancer phobia