Is there a connection between Nazis trying to justify their treatment of non-German people and the way people describe the fight against cancer? Metaphors We Die By lecture took a deeper look into that, and other, possible connections.

John Lyne, communications professor and director of graduate studies at the University of Pittsburgh gave a lecture Monday, Sept. 19 at the Grand Valley State University DeVos Center about how metaphors become staples in a society’s slang. Lyne said metaphors can become dangerous or can be used to break down problems in life.

The lecture was part of the sixth annual James W. Carey Memorial Lecture, a lecture put on by the GVSU school of communications honoring one of the founders of the school of communications.

“Anything literal can be metaphorical in a different sense,” Lyne said. “(They) can be good or bad, it just depends on how it’s used.”

Speaking to an almost full house, Lyne presented his take on why metaphors can become deadly, using examples from World War II and present day battles going on in the Middle East.

Nazi doctors, Lyne said, justified what they were doing by saying they were helping to cleanse the collective body of the German people. They used metaphors for disease to describe the murder of millions of people.

Lyne went on to explain how using metaphors for war in the field of medicine has an effect on how we perceive both.

“When we get used to describing cancer as a battle, it changes the way that we think about battles,” Lyne said.

Lyne said when war metaphors are used to talk about cancer, medical metaphors can leak into how people describe war, which can lead to problems.

When people are treated like a disease, Lyne said, it makes them “easier to cleanse.”

The large crowd at the speech had a mostly positive reception to the visiting lecturer.

“I loved it, I loved the topic,” said communication professor and event planner Valerie Peterson. “When we discussed what he was going to do, I thought this is super relevant to anyone who might be in the audience. You can find a way to have it apply to your life. It does affect your life.”

Peterson was encouraged by the large crowd at the event.

“Right before the event, I was just very happy,” Peterson said. “I was almost afraid there was going to be overflow and I asked if they could reserve the overflow room just in case there were more people showing up than there were seats.”

After the success of this year’s lecture, Peterson is optimistic that next year’s will be equally as interesting.

“These kind of opportunities, people think they happen all the time, and they really don’t,” Peterson said. “This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. This is interesting stuff.”