Corpus-assisted metaphor analysis of pregnancy discourse

The voices of people who have actually experienced pregnancy are not dominant in public discourses around pregnancy. This contributes to the discrimination faced by pregnant individuals as their voices are invisible in mainstream discourse and policymaking. The aim of this research is to compare those public pregnancy discourses with the discourses of those with lived experience, and thus to highlight sources of discrimination.

My research approaches this comparison through the analysis of metaphor as a linguistic device for understanding and conceptualising one concept as another. Metaphor affords the researcher direct access to the way people think. Embodied metaphor analysis, in particular, explores how metaphorical mappings are formed by the ways in which people perceive their bodies and how their bodies interact with their environment (see Littlemore 2019).

This is especially important to consider during pregnancy when there is a change in how a person may view their body caused by the new life developing and a conflict within the liminal space between one body and two.

In the field of health communication, research has identified metaphor, and metonymy (Semino 2010), to be useful for conveying lived experiences (especially those involving emotions and feelings of pain) that might be otherwise difficult for others to conceptualise and understand, and also as a way to manage a new sense of self after a life-changing illness (Demjen and Semino 2017; Semino et al., 2017; Gibbs and Franks, 2002). Littlemore and Turner (2019) found the same to be true of metaphors used by those who have experienced pregnancy loss during the Death Before Birth project that examined the experiences of those who had faced pregnancy loss.

This present project aims to build upon the work of this literature, particularly the work of Littlemore and her team, with a focus on pregnancy rather than its loss, which encompasses a large but often invisible group in society.

As previously mentioned, pregnant voices are often absent in public discourses but dominant in the discourses of communities like parenting forums, which serve as a powerful online community for parents and expecting parents (see Pedersen and Smithson, 2013; Pedersen, 2016; Mackenzie, 2018). A comparative metaphor analysis can reveal differences in the source concepts used based on audience, genre, and author experience (see Deignan et al., 2013; Semino et al., 2013).

The comparison of metaphor use between authors of differing pregnancy experiences and forum and public discourse will serve as a fruitful analysis.

Corpus analysis shows patterns in language and what is most salient. I have already created three corpora of pregnancy discourse from pregnancy forum Mumsnet, pregnancy magazines, and British newspapers. Corpus software will be used to find metaphors used to describe pregnancy and the emotional and physical feelings associated with it. Metaphors will be identified through keyword and key semantic analysis.

Research questions: 1. What are the salient metaphors found in each corpus and how do they compare across corpora? 2. What do these metaphors say about the ways in which different groups and media types think about pregnancy?