Metaphors and Risk Cognition in the Discourse on Food-Borne Diseases

The aim of this contribution is to discuss the most important issues connected with communicating food-borne diseases. The investigation focuses on the role of symbolic language in informing stakeholders about food-borne crisis situations. To narrow the scope of the research, the study concentrates on metaphors and their role in risk cognition, especially in the face of information overload. This approach allows the author to study the metaphorical dimension of risk cognition as well as its dynamics connected with the necessity of a constant response to changing internal and external conditions. Theoretical investigations on metaphors in food, health and risk discourse are often supported by empirical analyses on the use of metaphors in communicating food-borne diseases. This study encompasses selected materials on food-borne diseases gathered from Italian online sources and covers the corpus of investigated verbal metaphors. The aim of this chapter is to show whether metaphors strengthen or weaken risk cognition, and how far they determine the risk communication of food-borne diseases.