Uxbridge
Middlesex
UB8 3PHBiographical note Bella Vivat is a research lecturer who conducts qualitative research with people with chronic and/or life-limiting illness, framed by understandings from social studies of scientific, technological and medical knowledge. Currently her main research interests are lay and expert knowledges, and spiritual aspects of health and health care. of the hospice, and 2) the use of physical metaphors to describe both the increased probability of particular patients' deaths ("going down" or "going downhill"), and spiritual care ("getting deeper"). The paper explores these findings and the relationships between them. It discusses how workers in this hospice located death somewhere other than "here," both physically: in private spaces, and metaphorically: DOWN, which has strong negative associations. Workers also metaphorically located spirituality elsewhere: DEEP, so that "getting deeper" with patients meant that workers metaphorically accompanied them somewhere else. Although DEEP does not have the negative connotations of DOWN, "getting deeper" might mean encountering distressing, or DOWN, emotions. Many workers sought to counter these negatively perceived emotions by "cheering up" patients, rather than "getting deeper" with them.