Metaphors

This post  is devoted to an article published on PLOS Translational Global Health. Written on the wake of the Orlando tragedy - in which 49 people dead and 53 were wounded  in a popular gay nightclub, shot by a gunman  - the post is  authored by James Michiel, Senior Analyst at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. The post title is self-explicatory, "Public Health or Politics: The Recent History of America’s Gun Epidemic and What Public Health Can (and Should) Do to End It". Michiel argues that "as public health practitioners and researchers, we work to improve the health of the populations we serve. In the case of gun violence, this must include building a consensus on the causes of and remedies for this epidemic". There is little doubt that gun control is an important issue and that addressing gun violence should become a priority. Yet, this is not my focus. The reason why I am interested in Michiel's post concerns the metaphor that he uses, say, the description of gun violence as an "epidemic".

A metaphor is a figure of speech, which employs a comparison that concisely compares two things by saying that one is the other. Comparison, analogy, simile, and metaphor are related terms. Comparison is the most general term, including any kind of assessment of similarities and differences between two or more terms. Similes and metaphors compare two actions or qualities in order to suggest an identity or a likeness, but in metaphors the comparison is implicit, while in similes it is explicit. “Gun violence is like an epidemic” is a simile;   “Gun violence is an epidemic” is a metaphor. From a grammatical point of view, metaphors should  avoid using  words like  or as, while similes make use of them.

Psychologists, psychiatrists, experts in communication and linguists, have demonstrated what poets and storytellers have always known, say, metaphors possess a special ability to influence. Any metaphor is indeed made by two elements: i) a comparison; ii) a suggestion. Suggestion is the crucial element that makes metaphors so peculiar. 

Suggestion is a mental process according to which an individual accepts a mental content or a conduct coming from other individuals without doing any rational verification. Suggestive messages tend to transmit a wide spectrum of meanings, as sounds when they generate a sequence of resonant sounds, the so-called harmonics. Metaphors’ capacity to suggest under the level of consciousness and to transmit multiple messages make them particularly psychologically invasive. They must be handled with care. Metaphors could become a great tool to increase effectiveness in risk communication. Yet, they are also quite dangerous, if they are used unwittingly. 

Let's briefly analyze what are the main implicit messages transmitted by the metaphor "gun violence is an epidemic". They include at least 1) guns are similar to deadly virus and bacteria; 2) guns generate gun violence; 3) gun violence spreads by contagion; 4) Its diffusion should, and could, be arrested, by tackling the causal agent, say, gun availability. Assuming that these messages are really transmitted, one should ask whether there are also other messages conveyed. The answer is yes. Metaphors  work two ways. Metaphors must be always read also in their inverted form, if one wants to keep control on them and understand their impact on the public.

The message that guns are like microbes, unavoidably conveys also the message that microbes are like guns.  Saying "gun violence is an epidemic" implicitly tells people that microbes are as deadly as an AR-15 rifle, the semiautomatic weapon used in the Orlando carnage. Is this message correct? No, it is not.

Public health goal is  hardly to eradicate infectious diseases, either in humans or in animals. Most microbes are helpful and humans and animals need them. Microbes existed well before humans appeared on the surface of the earth, and they will exist well after our species will be disappeared. Apart from very few infections, our goal is to control infections. The dream to cancel pathogens from our life is just a form of hubris. 

What are the main consequences of this wrong message? They are at least two. First, this message gives the impression that public health authorities overemphasize risks connected to infectious diseases, which is the first step towards a slippery slope that drives to distrust. Second, this message reinforces the belief that infectious diseases result from an insult (the infection), which causes the disease in an individual. Not only this simplistic model is scientifically wrong, but it is the starting point of a misleading conception that turn infectious diseases into an individual business. Once such a wrong conviction is established, it would become quite difficult to convince people that vaccines, which are basically a community based intervention, are important.