Resemblance metaphors and embodiment as iconic markers in medical understanding and communication by non-experts Tercedor Sánchez, María Isabel Laínez Ramos-Bossini, Antonio Jesús Lexicon Iconicity Embodiment This research was carried out within the framework of CombiMed: lexical combinations in medicine, cognition, text and context (FFI2014-51899R), a research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness. This paper analyses resemblance metaphors as a cognitive device that can enhance understanding of medical realities, upholding their relevance in terminological work. It deals with metaphorical images as facilitators of comprehension of medical entities, from the perspective of embodiment. A twofold study was carried out: a spontaneous production task in which drawings of depression were made, and resemblance metaphors analyzed, and a corpus-based analysis of embodied views of depression. The drawings are made through embodied representations of concepts or perceptual symbolic simulations having their parallels in language use as observed in the CanFor corpus of online discussions about cancer. 2026-01-07T13:33:34Z 2026-01-07T13:33:34Z 2020 book part Published version: Tercedor-Sánchez, M. y Láinez Ramos-Bossini, A.J. Resemblance metaphors and embodiment as iconic markers in medical understanding and communication by non-experts. Operationalizing Iconicity, edited by Perniss, P. & Ljungberg, C. Iconicity in Language and Literature, 17:265-289. John Benjamins. doi:https://doi.org/10.1075/ill.17 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/109275 10.1075/ill.17 eng Iconicity in Language and Literature; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ open access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional John Benjamins