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Culture and the Metaphoric Mediation of Pain

McGill University, laurence.kirmayer{at}mcgill.ca

Although pain appears to be one of the most basic and obdurate sensations its meaning and experience are richly elaborated in many cultural traditions. The study of the cognitive processes that underlie metaphor provides a model of how sensory and affective qualities of bodily events are translated into symptom experience. Basic sensorimotor experiences provide the conceptual vocabulary used to build up more complex and abstract models. These are elaborated within specific traditions, communities, or local worlds in ways that fit with overarching cultural models. In turn, culturally elaborated metaphors influence basic cognitive, perceptual and attentional processes that modify sensory processing. This article will consider three sites of the metaphoric mediation of pain experience: bodily posture or stance, facial expression, and the experience of temporal duration. Each of these basic aspects of embodiment gives rise to bodily metaphors that shape the experience and expression of pain. Tracing how metaphoric constructions regulate cognitive affective and attentional processes provides a way to understand the cultural malleability of pain experience.

Key Words: face • metaphor • pain • posture • representation • time

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