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Illness and disease have been used as metaphors in writing, politics, and speech to refer to bad or threatening things. Analogies to the human body occur throughout language, including machines, technology, and relationships. Specific diseases are used as analogies in arguments and descriptive language. In literature and philosophy, disease is used as a metaphor to describe religious, social, and political ills.
Throughout history, the use of illness as a metaphor has existed in nearly every mode of communication. The metaphors of illness and disease have been used extensively in writing, politics, and everyday speech to refer to things considered bad or threatening. In novels and political discourse, the use of illness as a metaphor is sometimes continuous and thematic, with complicated literary or rhetorical dimensions. In other types of language, disease is used metaphorically for effect through comparisons, similes and figures of speech.
The different uses of illness as a metaphor go hand in hand with the human tendency to liken things to the human body. Analogies to the human body occur throughout the language and include metaphors as broad as the body of a political system, the brain of an organization, or the heart of a business. Everything that should work a certain way can be said to be healthy or unhealthy, and particular physical and mental ailments become effective metaphors to describe situations where things don’t work as they should, or when things don’t work as they should. someone perceives that they should.
Simple uses of illness as a metaphor include applications to things that are broken or in bad shape. Machines and technology are often described in terms of health: for example, an engine that sounds bad or a sick computer with a virus. Grass, trees, and fields are similarly described: for example, an unhealthy meadow, a diseased tree, or a diseased crop. This could extend to neighborhoods or parts of a country. Similarly, interpersonal, social, economic, and political relationships are all frequently referred to in terms of good or ill health: for example, an unhealthy marriage, a sick society, a struggling business, or an unhealthy judicial system.
Specific diseases are also used as analogies in arguments and descriptive language. Mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, ADD (attention deficit disorder), and Alzheimer’s disease are often used as figures of speech for anything that displays qualities of disorganization, lack of concentration, or forgetfulness. Obesity is sometimes applied to excess or excess, while anorexia to extreme thinning, denial or parsimony. Cancer is used rhetorically, especially in political discussions, to describe anything dangerous, pernicious, or insidious. This would include things that are very bad, hard to see, and operate with a hidden, selfish or harmful agenda.
In literature and philosophy, authors have extensively used disease as a metaphor to describe religious, social and political ills. The symbolist and decadent movements of the 19th century often used metal disease as an analogue for artistic sensibility. Various modern schools of literature and philosophy, such as existentialism, have made frequent analogies between disease and corruption or spiritual, social, and political malaise. In the late twentieth century, extensive scholarly attention was given to the many literary uses of disease and illness, making disease and pathology a popular trope for literary criticism and theory.
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