ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 takes a narrower focus than previous chapters. Rather than looking at patterns across broad section of the dataset, this chapter looks at metaphorical uses of labels referring to schizophrenia. The analysis begins by outlining Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) cognitive approach to conceptual metaphor. It then poses the problem of how to use corpus linguistic methods to examine a linguistic phenomenon that may be lexicalised in different ways. However, given that metaphorical uses of words tend to occur in a restricted set of phraseological patterns (e.g. Hanks, 2013), the analysis proceeds to link metaphorical meanings with specific collocation patterns. The analysis reveals an underlying conceptual metaphor of schizophrenia is internal inconsistency, although specific phraseological patterns realise the more specific meanings of “vacillating”, “erratic” and “split identity”. While the analysis is tentative about concluding that schizophrenia is the new ‘illness as metaphor’ (Sontag, [1978] 1990), it acknowledges that its use does capture certain unusual features of postmodernity.
