Identifying and categorising metaphors in New Zealand breast cancer discourse: Methods and challenges

Abstract

Metaphor is one of the common features in health communication, particularly in cancer discourse, as analysed by Semino et al (2018). While studying metaphors offers valuable insights, the process of identifying and categorizing them is challenging (Glynn and Biryukova, 2022). In this paper, we outline methods of metaphor identification and categorization in the YouTube breast cancer discourse of New Zealand English and also discuss the challenges involved.

We collected a corpus of forty-six personal narratives from New Zealand, posted between 2011 and 2023 on YouTube by breast cancer organizations. The data was transcribed using the Whisper AI tool and curated to include only patients’ discourse. This presentation discusses: (a) methods of metaphor identification, (b) methods of metaphor categorization, and (c) challenge in metaphor categorization and its solution.

For identification, we used Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980), the Metaphor Identification Procedure (Pragglejaz Group, 2007), and the New Zealand Oxford Dictionary to determine the basic meanings of words. For metaphor categorization, we used two approaches: (a) source domain labels, for instance, violence (terms representing any form of physical harm are categorized under the ‘violence’ category, such as ‘fight’, ‘hit’, ‘aggressive’) and (b) recurrent categories identified in existing literature.

One challenge was that some metaphors were borderline and could not fit neatly into a single category. To address this, we classified them as extensions of an existing category. For example, the term ‘fight’ clearly denotes physical harm and fits within the violence category, whereas ‘death sentence’ reflects punishment rather than direct violence. Therefore, it is considered an extension of the violence category, named as punishment metaphor. This study offers a systematic approach to metaphor identification and categorization, which can often be a challenging task.