Metáforas conceptuais sobre corpo: um estudo do discurso de universitários

People usually use metaphors and share not only knowledge but also socio-historical and cultural experiences. In order to construct a network the meanings of the body and cultures issues, this study aims at analyzing the discourse of obese and non-obese college students regarding the way they share metaphorical expressions and, consequently, conceptual metaphors about body. The discourse, which is connected to human thoughts and actions, constructs a net of meanings about body issues. Theoretical support is given by the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, 1999), which understands that cognition is linked to body and socio-cultural conditions in which metaphors are conventional, cultural and unconscious, besides being automatically accessed. Therefore, they reflect ideologies and ways of seeing the world. This study shows the collection of metaphorical expressions found in individual interviews made with obese and non-obese college students. The analysis deals with the explanation and characterization of metaphorical expressions, thus, enabling their correspondent conceptual metaphors to be revealed in the current socio-historical and cultural context. Results show that there is a dominant discourse about the body, with several convergences on body relations. Keywords: body, discourse, conceptual methaphor, obese/non-obese people.