It has become common today to dismiss the idea of metaphors taking a large impact on our every day lives. Dhruv Khullar presents, “The Trouble With Medicine’s Metaphors” as an informational story on how metaphors greatly affect views on illness. He describes how patients react with old military metaphors which are terms associated with illnesses. The outcome of pursuing the illness as a “fight” viewing it as a way to “suppress distress” or a “battle” seeing the illness as a “victory or a defeat” tends to shift the view on the patient’s mental state as a whole. The metaphor has a large impact on how the patient’s judgement of the illness will be. However, no matter what the patient is deemed, it is always the decision of the patient of how they see the situation.
I mostly agree with the statement that people will react different and feel different about the illness based on what they are told and how they receive the information. For example, when a “battle” is viewed as an enemy, of course a patient is going to view the illness more negatively and have higher depression rates than someone who is told the illness is something that should be “fought”. It gives more room to be optimistic and has a more open feeling that there could be a way out.
“The Trouble With Medicine’s Metaphors” Quote: “Life with chronic disease is a marathon, not a sprint, with bumps on the road and frequent detours.” I chose this quote because it gives an example of once the patient is given a metaphor, it determines how they view the disease as a whole and how metaphors really do affect us.
“Metaphorically Speaking TED Talk” Quote: “They took longer to reject metaphors as false than they did to reject literally false sentences…we cannot ignore the metaphorical meanings of words either.” I chose this quote because it really shows how much we are under the influence of metaphors and that it affects our ability to recognize simple grammar mistakes.
“See Through Words” Quote: “It’s the classic look at how metaphors structure the way we think…you can’t help but agree that, a conceptual level, life is a journey, and arguments are wars…” I chose this quote because it is part of an argument that I disagree with, but can understand why this is an essential to the way Erard thinks the way he does about metaphors.
