Is This Body Mine? Metaphorical Representations of the Body in Digital Testimonies of Women with Endometriosis

Agata Gołąb
In: Acta Philologica · 2025 · vol. 65 , pp. 69 · doi:10.7311/acta.65.2025.7 · W7123349449
article OA: diamond CC0
🔓 Open OA copy View on OpenAlex View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by gemini-2.5-flash-lite, 2026-06-13 ⓘ

This study analyzes digital testimonies from women with endometriosis to reveal how they use metaphors like the body as a living being or hostile territory to construct embodied identity and resist biomedical narratives.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

This article explores how women with endometriosis metaphorically represent their bodies in digital testimonies, revealing how cultural meanings of femininity, pain, and illness are negotiated through language. Drawing on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) and discourse-oriented cultural studies, the research analyzes a qualitative corpus of Facebook posts from the group Afectadas de endometriosis. Using the Metaphor Identification Procedure (Pragglejaz Group, 2007), the study classifies recurrent metaphorical patterns such as the body as a living being, a hostile territory, or a conscious agent. These figurative structures expose how women reframe biomedical narratives and construct new forms of embodied identity and resistance within digital communities. The findings highlight that metaphor functions not only as a cognitive mechanism but also as a cultural practice that shapes collective representations of the female body and illness. By linking discourse, culture, and embodiment, the article contributes to current debates on the visibility and social perception of women’s pain.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

endometriosis

Citation neighborhood (sparse)

Too few in-corpus citations on either side for a chart; here are the lists.

Cites (4)

References (16)

Source provenance

openalex
last seen: 2026-05-11T06:44:08.665183+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK