Dementia, or lazy gnomes lost in the dark? The metaphorical representation of dementia in children’s books

Dementia literacy needs to be improved in order to tackle the stigma surrounding the condition. To create adequate interventions, the representation of the condition in various types of discourse first needs to be analysed. The present study contributes to that aim by analysing conceptual metaphors used to describe dementia in Flemish children’s books. A corpus of eleven children’s books for ages three to fourteen was compiled and analysed using a bottom-up approach. Seven conceptual metaphors were identified, namely (1) dementia as holes, (2) dementia as darkness, (3) dementia as a malfunction, (4) people with dementia as children, (5) people with dementia as unstable, (6) people with dementia as immovable objects, and finally (7) people with dementia as gone. Fictional characters with dementia avoided the use of metaphors to describe themselves, but they did use metaphors to describe the condition and its symptoms.