Applying corpus linguistics in a health care context
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/japl.v1.i1.9Keywords:
corpus linguistics, conversational analysis, health care, clinical communication, applied clinical linguisticsAbstract
This paper draws on two strands of research and practice in language studies, namely i) studies of communication in health care encounters, and ii) studies of language corpora. It aims to delineate an area of ‘applied clinical linguistics’ which draws on these existing sub-disciplines so as to enhance our knowledge of communicative events in clinical settings. To illustrate the potential we draw upon a corpus-informed study of communication in staged telephone conversations between callers and advisers in the UK’s ‘NHS Direct’ health advisory service. Here, the combined application of corpus linguistics and conversation analytic techniques has revealed several hitherto undisclosed features concerning strategies used by health advisors to position the caller as the subject of the interaction, give credentials to the advice and terminate the encounter with a ‘convergence coda’. The integrated approach which combines corpus linguistic methods with existing frameworks in text analysis of health care contexts seems to offer new possibilities of data and theory building, as well as becoming a resource for practitioners themselves in clinical field settings.
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Pilnick, A. (1999) ‘Patient counselling’ by pharmacists: advice, information, or instruction? Th e Sociological Quarterly 40(4): 613–22.
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Schegloff , E. A. and Sacks, H. (1973) Opening up closings. Semiotica 7: 289–327.
Silverman, D. (1987) Communication and Medical Practice: social relations in the clinic. London: Sage.
Sinclair, J. M. (1997) Corpus evidence in language description. In A. Wachtman (ed.) Teaching and Language Corpora. London: Longman.
Storey, R. (1997) Th e Art of Persuasive Communication. Aldershot: Gower.
Stubbs, M. (2001) Texts, corpora and problems of interpretation. Applied Linguistics 22(2): 149–72.
Th omas, J. and Wilson, A. (1996) Methodologies for studying a corpus of doctor–patient interaction. In J. Th omas and M. Short (eds) Using Corpora for Language Research 92–109. London: Longman.
Widdowson, H. G. (2000) On the limitations of linguistics applied. Applied Linguistics 21(1): 3–25.
Bremner, A. D. (2002) Antihypertensive medication and quality of life – silent treatment of a silent killer. Cardiovascular Drugs and Th erapy 16: 353–64.
Brown, B., Crawford, P., Richards, K. and Nolan, P. (1999) Holding a mirror up to caring: Language and refl ective practice. Mental Health Care 4(3): 27–32.
Brown, P. and Fraser, C. (1979) Speech as a marker of situation. In K. R. Scherer and H. Giles (eds) Social Markers in Speech 33–62. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Campbell, R., Pound, P., Pope, C., Britten, N., Pill, R., Morgan, M. and Donovan, J. (2003) Evaluating meta ethnography: a synthesis of qualitative research on lay experiences of diabetes and diabetes care. Social Science and Medicine 56(4): 671–84.
Candlin, S. (1997) Towards excellence in nursing: an analysis of the discourse of nurses and patients in assessment situations. Unpublished PhD thesis, Lancaster University.
Candlin, S. (2000) New dynamics in the nurse-patient relationship? In S. Sarangi and M. Coulthard (eds) Discourse and Social life 230–45. London: Longman.
Candlin, S. (2003) Issues arising when the professional workplace is the site of applied linguistic research. Applied Linguistics 24(3): 386–94.
Candlin, C. N. and Candlin, S. (2003) Health care communication: a problematic site for applied linguistics research. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 23: 134–54.
Carter, R. and McCarthy, M. (1995) Grammar and the spoken language. Applied Linguistics 16(2): 141–58.
Chant, S., Jenkinson, T., Randle, J., Russell, G. and Webb, C. (2002a) Communication skills training in health care; a review of the literature. Nurse Education Today 22: 189–202.
Chant, S. Jenkinson, T., Randle, J. and Russell, G. (2002b) Communication skills: some problems in nursing education and practice. Journal of Clinical Nursing 11: 1–12.
Chisholm, M. (2002) Enhancing transplant patients’ adherence to medication therapy. Clinical Transplantation 16: 30–8.
Chomsky, N. (1957) Syntactic Structures. Th e Hague: Mouton.
Chomsky, N. (1976) Refl ections on Language. London: Fontana.
Chomsky, N. (1993) Language and Th ought. London: Moyer Bell.
Claxton, A. J., Cramer, J. and Pierce, C. (2001) A systematic review of the relationship between dose regimens and medication compliance. Clinical Th erapeutics 23(8): 1296–310.
Corriss, D. J., Smith, T. E., Hull, J. W., Lim, R. W., Pratt, S. I. and Romanelli, S. (1999) Interactive risk factors for treatment adherence in a chronic psychotic disorders population. Psychiatry Research 89: 269–74.
Crawford, P., Brown, B. and Nolan, P. (1998) Communicating Care: the language of nursing. Cheltenham: Stanley Th ornes.
Crawford, P., Johnson, A.J., Brown, B. and Nolan, P. (1999) Th e language of mental health nursing reports: fi ring paper bullets? Journal of Advanced Nursing 29(2): 331–40.
Crawford, P., Nolan, P. and Brown, B. (1995) Linguistic entrapment: medico-nursing biographies as fi ctions. Journal of Advanced Nursing 22: 1141–8.
Drew, P., Chatwin, J. and Collins, S. (2001) Conversation analysis: a method for research into interactions between patients and health care professionals. Health Expectations 4: 58–70.
Dube, L., Ferland, G. and Moskowitz, D. S. (2003) Emotional and Interpersonal Dimensions of Health Services. New York: McGill-Queens University Press.
Elwyn, G. (2001) Shared Decision Making: patient involvement in clinical practice. Nijmegen: WOK.
Ferguson. G. (2000) If you pop over there: a corpus-based study of conditionals in medical discourse. English for Specifi c Purposes 20: 61–82.
Florin, D. and Rosen, R. (1999) Evaluating NHS Direct: early fi ndings raise questions about expanding the service. British Medical Journal 319: 5–6.
Foster, J., Jessopp, L. and Chakraborti, S. (2003) Do callers to NHS Direct follow the advice to attend an accident and emergency department? Emergency Medical Journal 20: 285–8.
George, S. (2002) NHS Direct audited: customer satisfaction, but at what price? British Medical Journal 324: 558–9. Harris, S. (2003) Politeness and power: making and responding to ‘requests’ in institutional settings. Text 23(1): 27–52.
Heritage, J. and Stivers, T. (1999) Online commentary in acute medical visits: a method of shaping patient expectations. Social Science and Medicine 49: 1501–17.
Lakoff , R. (1973) Language and Woman’s Place. New York: Harper & Row.
Leech, G. (1994) Students’ grammar, teachers’ grammar, learners’ grammar. In M. Bygate, A. Tonkyn and E. Williams (eds) Grammar and the Language Teacher 17–30. London: Prentice Hall.
Leech, G. (2000) Grammars of spoken English: new outcomes of corpus oriented research. Language Learning 50(4): 675–724.
Maguire, P. and Pitceathly, C. (2002) Key communication skills and how to acquire them. British Medical Journal 325: 697–700.
Mangione-Smith, R. Stivers, T., Elliott, M., McDonald, L. and Heritage, J. (2003) Online commentary during the physical examination: a communication tool for avoiding inappropriate antibiotic prescribing? Social Science and Medicine 56: 313–20.
Mattingly, C. (1994) Th e concept of therapeutic emplotment. Social Science and Medicine 38(6): 811–22.
McCarthy, M. (1998) Spoken Language and Applied Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Munro, J. Nicholl, J., O’Cathain, A. and Knowles, E. (2000) Impact of NHS Direct on demand for immediate care: observational study. British Medical Journal 321: 150–3.
Nicholl, J. and Munro, J. (2000) Systems for emergency care. British Medical Journal 320: 955–6.
O’Cathain, A., Webber, E., Nicholl, J., Munro, J. and Knowles, E. (2003) NHS Direct: consistency of triage outcomes. Emergency Medical Journal 20: 289–92.
Pilnick, A. (1998) ‘Why didn’t you say just that?’ Dealing with issues of asymmetry, knowledge and competence in the pharmacist/ client encounter. Sociology of Health and Illness 20(1): 29–51.
Pilnick, A. (1999) ‘Patient counselling’ by pharmacists: advice, information, or instruction? Th e Sociological Quarterly 40(4): 613–22.
Porter, S. (2001) Women in a women’s job: Th e gendered experience of nurses. In W.C. Cockerham and M.L. Glasser (eds) Readings in Medical Sociology 407–19. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Roberts, C. and Sarangi, S. (1999) Hybridity in gatekeeping discourse: issues of practical relevance for the researcher. In S. Sarangi and C. Roberts (eds) Talk, Work and Institutional Order: discourse in medical, mediation and management Settings 473–503. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Roberts, C. and Sarangi, S. (2002) Mapping and assessing medical students’ interactional involvement styles with patients. In K. Spelman Miller and P. Th ompson (eds) Unity and Diversity in Language Use 99–124. London: Continuum.
Roberts, C. and Sarangi, S. (2003) Uptake of discourse research in interprofessional settings: reporting from medical consultancy. Applied Linguistics 24(3): 338–59.
Schegloff , E. A. and Sacks, H. (1973) Opening up closings. Semiotica 7: 289–327.
Silverman, D. (1987) Communication and Medical Practice: social relations in the clinic. London: Sage.
Sinclair, J. M. (1997) Corpus evidence in language description. In A. Wachtman (ed.) Teaching and Language Corpora. London: Longman.
Storey, R. (1997) Th e Art of Persuasive Communication. Aldershot: Gower.
Stubbs, M. (2001) Texts, corpora and problems of interpretation. Applied Linguistics 22(2): 149–72.
Th omas, J. and Wilson, A. (1996) Methodologies for studying a corpus of doctor–patient interaction. In J. Th omas and M. Short (eds) Using Corpora for Language Research 92–109. London: Longman.
Widdowson, H. G. (2000) On the limitations of linguistics applied. Applied Linguistics 21(1): 3–25.
Published
2004-02-17
Issue
Section
Articles
License
Equinox Publishing Ltd.
How to Cite
Adolphs, S., Brown, B., Carter, R., Crawford, P., & Sahota, O. (2004). Applying corpus linguistics in a health care context. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice, 1(1), 9-28. https://doi.org/10.1558/japl.v1.i1.9
