Corpo é uma máquina social: metáforas conceptuais no discurso de universitários

Abstract

Metaphors go beyond language: people have shared this cognitive knowledge and used it in socio-historical and cultural experiences without even noticing it. This study aims at analyzing the discourse of university obese and non-obese with regard to the sharing of metaphorical expressions, and therefore conceptual metaphors about body, skinny, obese, diet, food, health and culture, in the discourses that construct a network the meanings of the body and identity issues. Theoretical presuppositions are based on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (LAKOFF and JOHNSON, 1980/1999), which associates cognition with corporal and socio-cultural conditions, which states that metaphors are conventional, cultural, unconscious and the automatic access; thus, they reflect ideologies and ways of seeing the world. This study will show the corpus of metaphorical expressions found in the data collected in individual interviews carried out with obese and non-obese college students. The analysis will focus on the explanation and characterization of metaphorical expressions and will reveal not only their corresponding conceptual metaphors but also their identitarian traces in the current socio-historical and cultural context. The understanding the results will show the presence of a dominant discourse regarding body and obesity, with many convergences and few differences on body and identificatory relations.