Metaphors have been around for eras. We particularly use them in the health field when talking about illness and treating diseases. Dhruv Khullar’s “Trouble with Medicine’s Metaphors” talks about the link between military metaphor and the health field. Typically we associate someone’s journey with an illness as a fight and deem them a fighter. Is labeling those who are diagnosed with an illness as a fighter going to far? The words and sayings we link with a concept or thing affect how we think about that thing from there on out. Khullar believes in the way we perceive it. These views from Khullar about metaphors are from a doctor’s point of view. The views from two writers, James Geary and Michael Erard, deal with a different aspect of the way we handle metaphors but their findings also support Khullar’s troubles with medicine’s metaphors.
4 Comments
Comments are closed.
The health professional world is a growing world, it is all around all the time. Right now there is probably someone we know who is suffering from an illness, is in the hospital or has been seeking treatment going in and out of hospitals for quite some time. These times are hard for them, they are hard for us and we are just the ones who are there to support them. Going in and out of appointments hearing “you are a fighter” and “we can fight this together, one step at a time” has to have an effect on their wellbeing. Sure, to you and me they are just a metaphor made up decades ago during the war times where being a fighter meant being tough as nails and getting through the hard times, but now what does it actually mean to the ones we are saying the metaphor to? How do they react to it? After all they are the one who are the “fighter” the ones who have to put on the brave, stoic face every time they get called one. The trouble with using this metaphor and metaphors like these in a world as sensitive as the health professional world is words are powerful and we cannot tell how the other party involved will react to the saying, and it’s not our choice to choose how to tell them how to react to something as serious as an illness.
You made a good way to explain your view on the situation and making your claim clear. However, try and use your other sources such as Geary and Erard. They can provide you the function of the metaphor and with that knowledge you can further back up your claim on how military terms are not the best in a hospital setting.
I really like how you included more of your personal thoughts into your second draft of an introductions. It makes the reader already that much more interested when they can read how you feel about the topic.
You could work on the very beginning of your intro to see if there is an even more effective way of hooking the audience. I like it right now but you could play around with different ideas on how to jump into a scene or captivate the readers attention.
1) Good job having a strong position in both intros. It is clear what side you are on and why you think this.
2) I think you could maybe include more about metaphor in general you get pretty specific very quickly. This will hopefully make it flow better as you transition to the more specific parts about doctors and patients and can lay the foundation for more writing in the body of the paper.