Biting into the Bitter Reality: A Metaphorical Exploration of Food Disorders

This study investigated the metaphorical representation of eating disorders in a bilingual corpus of blogs. The analysis yielded three common metaphors: ED IS A JOURNEY; ED IS A WAR and ED IS A CONTAINER. Two language-specific metaphors emerged: ED IS A LIVING ENTITY in the Spanish subcorpus and ED IS A BODY in the English subcorpus. The journey and war metaphors demonstrated subtle linguistic nuances, with the Spanish speakers emphasizing the disease’s challenges and the English speakers emphasizing the prospects for recovery. The specific metaphors ED IS A LIVING ENTITY and ED IS A BODY highlighted cultural variations in agency, with the Spanish speakers portraying themselves as passive sufferers and the English speakers viewing themselves as active agents in the recovery process. This cultural divergence aligns with the distinct value orientations of American and Spanish cultures. While the limited text corpus precludes definitive conclusions, the findings align with previous research on conceptual metaphors in ED discourse. Further investigation is warranted to establish the figurative potential of different languages and determine whether either language employs more metaphors in the ED communicative domain.