Studia Filologiczne UJK

Summary

Disease is first of all an individual experience, because it recalls the finitude of every biological being. Illness is also a collective experience. Although the patient alone has to face his difficult existential and physiological condition, individually, entire communities participate in the process of therapy and healing. The disease in some cases is a local fact, sometimes expressed through proper names, e.g.: Ebola, Rift Valley fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever. The disease is predominantly a global fact and affects the entire world population. At times attempts are made to enclose it within national borders (French malady, Spanish fever, Indian variant), as if by assigning citizenship it was possible to remain immune from it. Considerations on the origin of some diseases will serve as a starting point for further analysis of linguistic mechanisms used to describe the experience of the disease. From a comparative point of view, we intend to present metaphorical meanings present in the common language both in Italian and Polish. The aim of this paper it to understand if the common experience of illness finds analogical forms of expression in different languages.