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This paper studies the linguistic and textual procedures through which adolescent subjects reformulate metaphorical expressions in a conversational context. My purpose is to examine the nature of the resources used in said reformulation, and to specifically analyze the procedures of metadiscursive qualification (Gülich and Kotschi 1995; Ciapuscio 2007a, 2007b) through which speakers comment and/or evaluate metaphorical expressions: the study reviews their presence, distribution and variation in exchanges among adolescent subjects who have been asked to reformulate metaphorical expressions in the context of a face-to-face conversation. My aim is to elucidate the extent to which the type and frequency of metadiscursive qualification accompanying and signaling reformulation processes are correlated with the degree of conventionality of the reformulated metaphorical expressions and, additionally, to contribute to the research on metaphor in a text corpus, especially, to the question regarding the conventional vs. innovative character of metaphors (Hanks 2004, 2006). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a set of narratives on critical episodes by people affected by migraine. The voice of patients has acquired higher relevance in recent years, after being long postponed in the field of medicine. Linguistic research on patients' discourse can contribute to the knowledge on and understanding of this disorder, and even to its diagnosis, as shown among others by the researches on cardiac and convulsive illnesses carried out by German and British teams (Gülich and Schöndienstt, 1999; Schwabe et al., 2008; Schwabe et al., 2007). In this article I present, from the perspective of conceptual metaphor theory and of discursive production theory, an analysis of a corpus of patient narratives in which people explain their migraine attacks: I am interested in expanding the knowledge on how these patients conceptualize and transmit their illness and its main symptom, i.e. headache. The analysis of patients' contributions focuses both on the qualitative aspects of pain and on the description of its intensity, which is particularly rich as regards expressive procedures and resources and leads, occasionally, to the thematization of feelings of fear and panic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]