This article presents an analysis of metaphors for Turner Syndrome that occurred in interviews with Polish women affected by this genetic aberration. It aims to reveal the women’s conceptualizations of the syndrome, and the way they converge and diverge depending on interviewee’s life experience, health-related problems, and therapies provided. The corpus embraces a 870-minute sample from interviews with 10 women. The analysis is carried out with metaphor operationalized as a framing device in discourse, whose main function is to impose a particular axiologically-charged construal of TS. The outcomes of the analysis show that metaphorical mappings converge regardless of patients’ experience. Divergence is observed in axiologically-charged representations of the consequences that TS has on women’s social positioning and the power they exercise over their physical and emotional condition. The results of the study also reveal that the perceptions of TS are associated with significant social consequences including stigmatization, discrimination as well as substantial financial and social costs.

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Conceptualizations of Turner syndrome by Polish patients through the lens of the Illness Representation Model

  • Kamila Ciepiela

摘要

This article presents an analysis of metaphors for Turner Syndrome that occurred in interviews with Polish women affected by this genetic aberration. It aims to reveal the women’s conceptualizations of the syndrome, and the way they converge and diverge depending on interviewee’s life experience, health-related problems, and therapies provided. The corpus embraces a 870-minute sample from interviews with 10 women. The analysis is carried out with metaphor operationalized as a framing device in discourse, whose main function is to impose a particular axiologically-charged construal of TS. The outcomes of the analysis show that metaphorical mappings converge regardless of patients’ experience. Divergence is observed in axiologically-charged representations of the consequences that TS has on women’s social positioning and the power they exercise over their physical and emotional condition. The results of the study also reveal that the perceptions of TS are associated with significant social consequences including stigmatization, discrimination as well as substantial financial and social costs.