Visual and Verbal Tropes in Medical Knowledge Dissemination: An English-Italian Cross-Linguistic Study of Lactose Intolerance Websites

The present research analyzes how websites run by clinics and hospitals disseminate medical knowledge on lactose intolerance and how they transmit complex concepts to a general audience by means of visual and verbal figurative tropes. In line with another investigation (Cesiri, forthc.), this study compares four healthcare institutions’ websites in English and four similar websites in Italian by identifyinig verbal figurative tropes using Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), and Kövecses’s (2020) Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory (ECMT), while visual tropes are analyzed through Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2020) model and then interpreted via CMT/ECMT. Results from the two sets of web pages are then interpreted using the concept of (inter)cultural dimensions (Hofstede, 2011) to account for the differences that may exist in the figurative representation of lactose intolerance to the different audiences. Findings reveal that popularization of lactose intolerance is not a culturally neutral process; rather, it is shaped by deeply embedded socio-cultural norms regarding authority and agency, thereby highlighting the necessity for health communicators to adapt multimodal strategies to local cultural expectations to ensure the effective dissemination of specialized medical knowledge across linguistic and cultural borders.