Military metaphors are pervasive in medicine. It is not uncommon that one might hear physicians refer to pathogens as enemies to be defeated, destroyed, or even killed. Metaphors being used to express scientific ideas and treatments is emerging in the health care field. The use of military metaphors in medicine is due to a long history of conflict and have become woven into a part of today’s health care. Dhruv Khullar states that “using military terms like ‘battle’ and ‘fighter’ to help patients conceptualize their illness can sometimes harm more than it helps.” Khullar gives a number of claims that will be examined later on, on how using such powerful terms can have a significant impact on the patient. However, by looking at the works of James Geary and Michael Erard, on the ways in which metaphors are useful and how they should be interpreted, I view this type of figurative language to be beneficial and bring a sense of hope to the patient.
In Class Draft:
All of our lives we are told to think before we speak, we are told to ask ourselves if what we are going to say is it true, helpful, inspiring, necessary, and kind, we are asked to think. Although this was something taught to us from a young age, I feel that still we are not aware of the impact that our words can have on others. According to James Geary, we utter about 6 metaphors a minute, if this is true, then I find it hard to believe that each and every one of us goes through the “think” process and ask ourselves all of those questions, I know I don’t. However, in todays world of medicine, we have to ask ourselves the impact that our words and the metaphors we use have on our patients and their physical and mental health. We may that what we thought was a helpful comparison or explanation through metaphor can actually be harming the mental and physical health of our patients.
One thing that works well in your draft is the way you acknowledged both sides of the argument – I think this helps the reader be more willing to listen to your perspective! One thing that could be stronger is making your paragraph have less use of words like “I”.
I love how you start off with a real life situation on where we may have heard metaphors before! I feel like this really connects the reader with the text in the first introduction paragraph that you had wrote! One thin that I think could use some work is that you introduce Khullar’s ideas a lot although you to me it seems like you don’t go into detail with Geary or Erard enough. Maybe instead of going into detail for each of the authors thoughts on metaphors in the introduction paragraph, you could go into detail in a separate paragraph for each? I also love the quote from Geary that you provided, I love how you made a connection with yourself and the text!
You did a good job with separating sides on your argument and focusing on what you believe.
One thing that could be stronger is the part that you wrote in the first sentence about the military medicine. You could tie it to how it was brought up in Khullars essay, but it looks good. Good Job!