What is in a word? An exploration of the metaphorical use of schizophrenia in general American English

Abstract

Research on the representation of schizophrenia in the media has revealed that it might have become the new illness as metaphor and that its pejorative metaphorical use is a determining factor in its negative public perception. Drawing on Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this study presents the first systematic analysis of the use of “schizophrenia” as a metaphor beyond the media by examining the use, distribution, framing and evaluative/argumentative functions of the terms “schizophrenia”, “schizophrenic” and “schizophrenics” in the largest freely available corpus of contemporary American English, the COCA corpus. The results show that the metaphorization of “schizophrenia” is particularly frequent in internet-based genres and that it is employed to describe a wide range of phenomena ranging from people and political ideologies to religion, law, and social attitudes toward topics such as sex, drugs, or immigration. It usually conveys negative connotations (94% of cases identified in the corpus) and is instrumentalized for different argumentative purposes including its use as a derogatory or dismissive remark or as a word of caution.