Abstract
Initiating a series of four case studies, this chapter explores the applicability of Proximization Theory in health discourse. It demonstrates that fear-inducing proximization strategies are widely present in the discourse of disease prevention and health promotion. Picturing disease as ‘aggressive enemy’ which ‘invades’ the patient, the speaker (medical practitioner, healthcare institution) generates a fear appeal which helps justification of a preferred course of treatment. The chapter uses data from anti-tobacco and swine flu prevention campaigns.
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Notes
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Let alone intriguing metaphoric correspondences. Apart from the analogies listed by Van Rijn-van Tongeren (1997), note that (6) may force construal of the screening programs as intelligence, the infected cells as terrorist cells, the new treatment as air strikes on the terrorist cells, and the healthy cells as civilian population (‘We now aim to…, doing minimal harm to healthy cells’).
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Cap, P. (2017). Health Discourse: The War on Cancer and Beyond. In: The Language of Fear. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59731-1_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59731-1_3
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