| Author: | Qiu, Han |
| Title: | Metaphor use by trauma victims : a case study of the 2019-2020 Hong Kong social unrest |
| Advisors: | Tay, Dennis (ENGL) Ahrens, Kathleen (ENGL) |
| Degree: | Ph.D. |
| Year: | 2023 |
| Subject: | Metaphor Discourse analysis Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Department of English and Communication |
| Pages: | xix, 286 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Traumatic events such as natural disasters, bereavement, war, and social unrest often bring about intensely and complex subjective experiences, including emotional afflictions, cognitive disturbances, and physiological discomfort (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Since it is difficult to address such experiences using purely literal expressions, trauma victims often resort to metaphorical language to bridge the gap between what they have truly experienced and what they are able to express with words. This thesis presents a case study of metaphor use by 46 trauma victims of the 2019-2020 Hong Kong Social unrest to explore the contextual characteristics of trauma metaphors and the interactions between metaphor use and the speakers' psychopathological experiences. While previous research on trauma metaphors provided rich and detailed accounts of substantive features of metaphors reflected by vehicle terms and target topics, only scant attention has been paid to the interactions between substantive and non-substantive aspects of metaphors such as conventionality, emotional valence, and speakers' perspectives-taking in metaphorization, which capture the speakers' preferred ways of organizing and presenting metaphorical ideas (Kövecses, 2010). Through a mixed-method analysis that combines categorical data analysis and qualitative discourse analysis, Study 1 of this thesis (presented in Chapter 3) investigates the quantitative, systematic metaphor usage patterns indexed by the three abovementioned non-substantive variables. The findings show that the instantiations of CONVENTIONALITY and EMOTIONAL VALENCE differed remarkably across trauma victims' descriptions of eight therapeutically interesting target topics and their metaphorical meaning-making from different psychological PERSPECTIVES. The findings reveal the possibility for non-substantive aspects of metaphors to be instantiated in quantitatively systematic and context-sensitive ways, underlining the potential for such aspects to capture general tendencies of metaphor use that are characteristic of a given trauma population and specific metaphor topics. Despite the fact that trauma is primarily psychological and psychopathological in nature, and that the subjective experiences could vary substantially across individuals and varieties, trauma victims' metaphor use has rarely been examined for systematic, empirical relationships with clinically defined, psychometrically measured psychopathological experiences. Study 2 and Study 3 (presented in Chapters 4 and 5) address this research gap by incorporating psychometric data and relevant clinical observations into metaphor analysis. Contextualizing metaphor analysis into the scenario of trauma evaluation, Study 2 examines how trauma victims' metaphor usage patterns vary with their overall degrees of trauma and severities of the five ASD symptoms measured by the Stanford Acute Stress Reaction Questionnaire (SASRQ; Cardeña et al., 2000). Results of correlation analyses show that severities of the six clinical conditions, each characterized by a distinct set of emotional, cognitive, and physiological features, were significantly correlated with several different yet sometimes overlapping metaphor variables. The significant patterns were then illustrated using genuine linguistic examples and interpreted in relation to the experiential and cognitive foundations of corresponding clinical conditions. Study 3 contextualizes metaphor analysis into a more specialized clinical scenario of Acute Stress Disorder (ASD) and symptom diagnosis and examines how trauma victims who met the diagnostic criteria of ASD as measured by the SASRQ use metaphors to describe their experience of the five major ASD symptoms. A correspondent analysis (Tay, 2016) that juxtaposes linguistic data and clinical observations about the speakers' descriptions of symptoms was accomplished jointly by the author of this thesis and a registered therapist who is experienced in trauma treatment; metaphors produced by qualified subjects were identified for their relevance to the five ASD symptoms and analyzed in terms of their underlying image schemas. The analysis identified distinct clusters of image schemas in the metaphorization of the five symptoms and different clinical manifestations of the same symptom. The two studies foreground trauma victims' psychopathological experience of trauma and specific clinical symptoms as an important contextual factor in shaping metaphor use and thus enable a deeper understanding of the contextualized nature of real-world metaphors. The findings also provide supplementary evidence that highlights the experiential and cognitive foundation of metaphor use. The three studies, taken together, constitute a multi-level analysis of trauma metaphors. Study 1 examines the interactions among multiple theoretically and practically interesting variables at the linguistic level; Study 2 explores the dynamic variations of trauma metaphors at the subject level; Study 3 identifies metaphor usage patterns at the disorder and symptom level. Taken together, the three studies offer a more holistic view of trauma victims' conceptualization of their complex and painful subjective experiences and the dynamic interactions between trauma metaphors and relevant contextual factors. In the practical sense, the studies provide useful references for mental health practitioners' understanding and management of trauma metaphors; their findings also highlight the possibility for metaphor analysis to be incorporated as a potentially helpful tool for clinical assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of trauma. From the methodological perspective, the multi-level analysis outlines a feasible model for analyzing metaphor use associated with specific mental health disorders. The combination of quantitative methods and the incorporation of a clinically situated perspective in metaphor analysis also hold important implications for research on trauma and mental health metaphors. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | open access |
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