Depressione su Internet La concettualizzazione della depressione in blog e in gruppi di autoaiuto polacchi e italiani

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to illustrate similarities and differences in the conceptualisation of depression by Polish and Italian authors of blogs and/or posts, who experienced the disease. The analyses presented in the paper are mainly based on the cognitive theory of metaphor by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson and constitute a part of a wider research topic regarding the differences in conceptualisation of depression depending on such factors as: language, discourse, kind and personal experience of the author concerning the state of depression. The study revealed that the dominant metaphors of depression in the analysed texts, in both languages, are: depression is an enemy and depression is a bad life companion. Moreover, the second of them is a typical way/manner of representing depression by the people who experience or have experienced it. Other metaphors that occur either in Polish or in Italian texts are: depression is a location (and its more specific representation depression is an oppressive place) often situated down and taking the form of a container, depression is dark / darkness and depression is burden. The most vivid dissimilarity between the analysed languages concerns the existence of the conceptualisations in which depression is valued as positive in the Polish texts and their absence in the Italian ones, whilst the most common differences are the ones regarding specific representations of the common, more general metaphor.