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This paper is a qualitative study of metaphors at the levels of lexico-encyclopedic conceptual (LEC) metaphors (Johansson Falck 2018, forthc.) in nineteenth-century medical records of tinnitus and hearing disorders by English-speaking (the UK and the US) practitioners. Metaphor is essential for the linguistic and conceptual expression of illness (Semino 2008: 175) and, as we observe, remains endemic for the description of tinnitus in medical records. Our primary aim is to identify the metaphors used to describe the sounds of tinnitus, the kinds of experiences involved in these metaphorical conceptualizations and the cognitive and affording presence of tinnitus metaphors. The results suggest that metaphor provides a framework for the analogical reasoning about tinnitus and the methods of its treatment. Nineteenth-century accounts of ear diseases reference the sounds of biological and non-biological natural categories, transport and industrial sounds, the sounds of domestic interiors and music. 

Metaphorical descriptions of tinnitus sounds connect with the affordances of the environment (Gibson 2015) and are inherent to the location and occupation of the patient. As our findings support the historical explorations of tinnitus accounts, they make it possible to contribute to our current understanding of tinnitus by highlighting the importance of a patient-centered approach and establishing the significance of metaphor analysis in tinnitus studies. 

In the eerie world of Gothic literature, sound represents a source of fear, anxiety, and discomfort, and it mostly affects its listeners through the invisible character of the experience. Sound is integral to nineteenth-century Gothic short stories with their panoply of liminal and polyphonic oppositions, as well as a claustrophobic feel of spaces, fearful listeners, and the return of the repressed. The meaning of sound in the perceived environment entangles discussions about the way Gothic literature represents and registers sound in its connection with space and listener. This thesis examines literary soundscapes, or a combination of sounds and sound patterns, in Gothic short stories of nineteenth-century writers Edgar Allan Poe, Samuel Warren, Matthew Phipps Shiel, Edith Nesbit, Phoebe Yates Pember, William Mudford, William Maginn, John Galt, and Charles Lever. Through close reading of the material, my study explores how sound engages with space and listener in four settings: houses, bedrooms, torture chambers, and burial grounds. By linking the auditory dimension and the spatial features, it is argued that soundscapes establish a system of communication that is essential for the formation and reconstruction of the listener’s sense of identity through empowering or disempowering acoustic trials. The four types of Gothic settings structure the dissertation, where each chapter has a story by Edgar Allan Poe as its nucleus. First I analyze the acoustic landscape of a house in its representation and influence on the listener. The acoustic diversity and multi-dimensionality of Gothic houses transgress into the imaginary acoustic landscapes and endanger the listeners. Next, I examine the private audible space of a (bed)room. The stories feature the uncanny sound of a heartbeat that becomes a destabilizing force and communicates the return of the repressed. I proceed to the interrelationship of sound, torture, and the victim in the (in)voluntary torture chambers. Finally, I focus on the burial grounds through the perspective of the protagonist confined in the limitations of the body and the surroundings. In its plurality of forms, sound becomes a key to self-image and self-assertion through the transformative acoustic experience. Gothic houses, rooms, and torture chambers represent a mutable and controlling power with an agency of living, breathing, and tormenting animated entity. The study reveals the forms of listening aggravated with physical or mental affliction that both engage with and destabilize medical frameworks. I expose temporality in Gothic soundscapes and underscore liminality as endemic both to the facets of Gothic soundscapes and the interconnection between the visual and the aural. In the coda, I highlight the reinvention of Gothic soundscapes in animated adaptations that intertwine aesthetic enjoyment and interpretative judgement.