The Expression of Reality in Football News

2010

The notion of reality has been reanalyzed since the post-structuralism era as something socially and linguistically constructed. Language shapes reality, allowing the communication of ideas, theories and emotions through words. Through discourse, information is transferred and/or modified in the passages between addresser and addressee. In fact, the speaker may modify information in the transfer process by expressing commitment to the reality of his/her statement. Subjectivity thus becomes the key factor needed in order to understand reality as it is expressed in discourse. The data for this study is online texts drawn from the two major online newspapers and two football teams'' official n…

Infotainment and the Construction of a Community in Sport-News

2010

The community of sport expresses aggression, competition and solidarity when consuming or (re)producing social events and identity (gender, ethnicity, sexuality) plays an important role (Kassing et al., 2004) in the construction of a community (Magnane, 1964; Colovic, 1999). This paper presents a case study of two online sport commentaries that have been analysed in order to explore the ways in which identity is constructed and communicated within these two epistemic communities and to both identify and verify which linguistic strategies are used by the epistemic communities in order to support (their claims to) objective knowledge. Cross-cultural comparisons can be made in relation to conv…

Language and Football: textual elements between story-telling and sports reporting

2007

“The war is over”. Militarizing the language and framing the Nation in post-Brexit discourse

2020

This chapter analyzes the militarization of political language in digital contexts in the post-Brexit discourse, and how such militarization, which is often constitutive of hate speech, contributes to framing an “exclusive” concept of the nation whose meaning is reproduced and circulated (as well as challenged) in society. It will address the role of emotions and hate in language in fueling and aggregating online communities around a key political issue, i.e. the Brexit negotiations, and a core cultural and social concept, i.e. the nation. The militarization of language, which is based on certain discursive structures, e.g. war metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Musolff 2020), is one of th…

Defence strategies in an online community of caregivers

2021

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand caregivers’ discursive constructions and responses to their unwanted (family and social) role as resulting in exchanges on social media. Online group platforms are understood as particularly suitable for the expression of intimate feelings among adults, for meeting and exhibiting stigma issues, and for the circulation of information and support (Suler, 2004; McCormack, 2010; Pounds et al., 2018). Design/methodology/approach This paper draws from digital Conversation Analysis (Giles et al., 2015), and considers data after combining quantitative (corpus analysis) and qualitative methods, from a critical discourse analysis perspective. The St…

Formal and Informal Features in CMMC. Some observation on Dctor-Patient Interaction in Online Communication

2012

The Web Participatory Environment: a New Genre in Health Exchange

2014

The Internet has provided new and expanded means of communication, incorporating all forms of discourse and registers, including that of medical discussion. Certain sites, in fact, specialise in healthcare and provide information, offering direct access to counsellors (medical professionals qualified to provide advice) and forums in which the role of participants is that of potential nonspecialists who share opinions, gather information on healthrelated issues and ambiguous medical meanings. The benefits of a healthrelated online forum lie in its ability to quickly and conveniently connect people to both important information and to other people with knowledge regarding a specific health…

Evidentiality and Commitment: An example from Sports Medical Writing

2014

Language and Science - How to use language to understand scientific articles

2008

Health on the net: the doctor answers

2012

The global net system has certainly played an important role in the increase and the following modification of communication dynamics. The term 'online community' has become increasingly popular and refers to a group of people in the online forums who share opinions and information as well as strong feelings of camaraderie, empathy and support (Preece 2005). Message boards have become the easiest way of asking for any information, and anyone can register to participate in an online discussion. The exchange of detailed knowledge, ideas or questions satisfies the users in most discourse domains because such exchange is fast, easy, and free. However, in particular situations such as doctor-pat…

In-Between discourse and genre: doctor-patient interaction in online communication. Formal and informal features in CMC

2012

Abstract This paper presents the results of a corpus-based study which investigates the genre of medical eexchanges between doctors and medical website users. Three conversational routines (greetings, politeness, formal and informal linguistic features) are analyzed. The framework of the study is what some researchers refer to as net linguistics (Posteguillo 2003), consisting of the linguistic study of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). The findings indicate that health posts are a relatively informal type of d/p interaction which is largely influenced by e-mails and chat conventions.

New Health Advice: Health Forum Sites as a Change of Discourse Frame, from Doctor-to-Patient to User-to-User

2016

Health forum communities form support groups responding to the need for information. Participants in these communities nd a space in which they share experiences and feelings, and are able to recount their success stories and failures according to a ‘gather, share and learn’ paradigm. One of the main worries concerning these spaces has been the unmonitored information that is provided by users who do not/ cannot take responsibility for what they say. Previous studies were intended to explore how individuals with health issues use health-related online communities to access information and support. This research, on the other hand, examines the extent to which health advice may be conversati…

Linguistic Aspects in Web Counselling

2013

The global net system has provided new and expanded means of communication incorporating all forms of discourse, including medical interaction. However, due to the tentative nature of medical discourse, online relations between professionals and their patients still encounter limitations. Standard procedures between the doctor and patient allowed the doctor to assume an authoritative role as his position provided personal remedy or advice to the patient at hand. Consequently, he was relied upon to solve the initial complaint, and this capacity rendered the patient as the dependent party. The responsibility of this exchange was to counsel, and the doctor was therefore required to use accessi…

Health Querying in the Digital Era. The Language of Health 2.0

2015

This book deals with the linguistic resources used in e-heath, in particular in the dialogue between specialists and e-patients as well as among users in e-forums. Traditional d/p exchanges have self-adapted to create new forms, and have evolved into a different product entirely. After establishing the area within the concept of e-health and the reasons why it is important to talk about this phenomenon, the book reports some analyses that show different aspects of these online exchanges. Starting from genre, linguistic features and dialogic markers, it continues on considerations on role postions and credibility as well as on legitimation of trust.

La variante accademica

2005

Doctor-patient exchanges in web counselling

2011

There are two overall approaches to doctor-patient interaction: the biomedical one and the socio-relational one. The biomedical approach is the most common and tends to explore the asymmetrical doctor-patient relationship. with the doctor seeking information about the patient’s complaints, giving a diagnosis and prescribing a treatment. The aim of this kind of communication is to create a good relationship in order to exchange information and facilitate treatment-related decisions. However, it is well-known that the production of talk is linked to the context. The relationship between doctor and patients can be performed online, through specific collaborative care service sites. It is still…

Exploring web-mediated communication: A genre-based linguistic study for new patterns of doctor–patient interaction in online environment

2016

This paper questions the nature of the communicative event that takes place in online contexts between doctors and web-users, showing computer-mediated linguistic norms and discussing the nature of the participants’ roles. Based on an analysis of 1005 posts occurring between doctors and the users of health service websites, I analyse how doctor–patient communication is affected by the medium and how health professionals overcome issues concerning the virtual medical visit. Results suggest that (a) online medical answers offer a different service from that expected by users, as doctors cannot always fulfill patient requests, and (b) net consultations use aspects of traditional doctor–patient…

L'identità nella poesia: Song of Lawino

2005

Online trends, linguistic innovation and further implications in the language of the online consultation: a case study

2016

Integrating a corpus linguistic approach with content analysis and studies on computer mediated health discourse (Harvey and Koteyko, 2013), this study analyses the role of technology in healthcare communication and considers the evolutions in the doctor-patient exchange. Considering interactional norms, and the new literacy of online forum users (Jensen, Fage-Butler, 2014), this study investigates the trends and the linguistic patterns as well as the nature of digital doctor-patient exchanges in online question/ answer format frames, since specification of roles has changed and linguistic exchanges have evolved into different outcomes. In addition, the medium imposes its norms and a totall…

Credibility and Responsibility in User-generated Health Posts: Towards a Co-construction of Quality Knowledge?

2015

In the context of the growing number of sites related to health issues and online conversation, statistical research tends to confirm that com- munication through health message boards has a significant role to play in the era of online counseling (Eysenbach/Diepgen 1999; Mulholland 1999; Anderson et al. 2003; Gooden/Winefield 2007; Kim/Yoon 2011). Previous studies have explored how people discussing health issues use health-related online communities or doctor-answer support facilities to access information and support. In fact, one of the main worries concerning these spaces has been the uncontrolled information that is provided by users with no defined roles and who do not/cannot take re…

Some linguistic observations on patient’s blogs

2008

Subjectivity on the Web: The Case of Social Networks and the H1N1 emergency

2010

Blogs are extensively used for personal accounts and news reports. In particular, health blogs can be considered as both information sources and communication channels be- tween Science and Society, since they face the growing need for information among non-insiders. This study is concerned with the dimension of reality portrayed in blog comment en- tries; focusing particularly on participants'' representation of facts and their commit- ment to the truth of the proposition. The framework for this study has been shaped by the typologies in Chafe (1986), Willett (1988), Van der Auwera and Plungian (1998), Plungian (2001), Marìn (2002, 2004). Data are taken from three health and science we- bl…

English and the language of Sports

2008

When the doctor is online: web counselling

2011

Computer Mediated Medical Communication

Web counseling: A new health discourse

2011

The current research seeks to analyse a corpus formed by question entries on health issues that appeared in biomedical/health sites and forums. The focus of the paper is to identify the dimension of reality portrayed in health web-discourse. The samples collected were analysed individually and then organised in tables in order to find discourse patterns for structure and organization of moves together with their functional meaning. For each move, grammatical items were identified in order to assess the dimension of evidentiality, modality, and affect. The writer's attitude toward the stance is analyzed through epistemic modality; the reliability and the qualification of source-of-informatio…

“Language and health care: from academic subject to professional tool for nursing students”

2009

In the academic world, English was brought by the Tabella XVIII, introduced by the European Committee, which made English a compulsory examination in any medical course. The skill required as described in the Decree is: “a basic knowledge of English, with the end of acquiring the ability to keep up-to-date in experimental and clinical medicine”. The Decree stated what should be the macroskills, but didn’t explain what “basic English” meant. So Universities were left discussing the syllabus and what should be learnt, and guidelines to overcome the surfacing issues and to standardize requirements. Also, the process of globalisation has produced a sort of melting pot, where linguistic (and cul…