Metaphors and identities on an online forum dedicated to pain

Becoming seriously and/or chronically ill can challenge and disrupt our sense of who we are, in terms of our bodies, minds, and social roles. While a substantial literature exists on metaphor and illness, the use of metaphor to represent identities has received little attention. This paper focuses on similes as a particularly relevant manifestation of metaphoricity in language. An 8-million word corpus of contributions to the online forum Pain Concern is investigated via a combination of corpus linguistic methods and in-depth qualitative analysis. We explore how contributors to the forum use similes to describe their own (changing) self-perceptions due to living with pain and its consequences. To this end, we introduce and demonstrate a multi-component analytical framework, which, as we show, is equally applicable to the analysis of metaphorical expressions. The framework includes a consideration of: source concept; type of identity; and viewpoint. With regard to our data, we show how similes are used to convey mostly unwelcome changes in the persons’ perception of themselves in physical, psychological and/or social terms, potentially resulting in estrangement, low self-esteem, isolation and disempowerment. More broadly, we suggest that our framework is applicable to the study of metaphorical representations of identities in the context of illness generally.