O uso de metáforas e metonímias por pacientes esquizofrênicos à luz da teoria da metáfora conceptual

Abstract

Part of the psychiatric scientific literature until the end of the 20thcentury has suggested deficits in metaphor production and comprehension by patients with schizophrenia. However, Cognitive Linguistics studies gave rise to understanding human language as inherently metaphorical. In this work, the speeches of five schizophrenic patients are analysed aiming to investigate the figurative language production. Three data analysis procedures were used: the Metaphor Identification Procedure; the Metaphor Annotation for Source-Target Domain Mappings and the consecutive qualitative conclusion of connotatively identified fragments. Results revealed that schizophrenic patients produced both conceptual metaphors and metonymies: on average, 2,4% of their speech were figurative expressions, 10,6% of which being creative. Among mappings, 31,5% concerned the conceptual metaphor “abstract concept is physical entity”, whereas 4,8% concerned metonymy “institution for people responsible”. Thus, as language is a consequence of cognition settled in interaction with a culture, the schizophrenic speech reveals some level of metaphoric and metonymic cognition.