Quality of life in children with duchenne de boulogne muscular dystrophy

Metaphor and Brain: A Neuropragmatic Overview

This article offers an overview of the different types of metaphor and cognitive abilities that are required in metaphor comprehension. It does so in connection with the general psycholinguistic and prag- matic theories of metaphor, which are examined briefly. Attention is then turned to neuropragmatic functions and the brain in terms of anatomic structure and functioning. Finally, the article suggests some relevant areas for future research.

ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES

LE VECU DU CORPS DANS LA SOCIETE DES ANTILLES FRANCAISES

Lexical verbs in a medical case-report wordlist

Clinical case reports or clinical cases (CRs) are, perhaps, the most widely read text type in medicine, since they contain a detailed description of the patient’s medical history and symptoms and thus furnish ample teaching material for physicians-in-training. For non-native speakers of English in medicine, autonomous learning is often restricted because of a lack of medical lexicon, poor academic vocabulary, and weak lexical verb use. Here, we present the results of an investigation of lexical verbs: their distribution, classification, and contextual use in the different sections of the genre CRs. We suggest that lexical verbs with contextual use should be included in medical dictionaries …

Indagine sui centri polifunzionali per adolescenti presenti in Sicilia nel 2003

Lexical verbs for medical professionals

In recent years, English has become the lingua franca of medicine and the language teaching profession has seen the emergence of im- plementing English for Medical Purposes (EMP) courses. The needs of EMP learners are very specific and EMP teachers who are language experts and not medical ones need to develop materials that are in line with EMP learners’ specific needs. In response to recognizing EMP students’ needs, extensive corpus-based research has led to specialized medical wordlists (Chen and Ge 2007; Wang, Liang, Ge 2008; Mungra and Canziani 2013; Hsu 2013; Lei and Liu 2016). Such wordlists have given instructors the opportunity to focus on specific vocabulary facil- itating domain s…

Metaphor they heal by?

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of figurative speech in Medical English paying special attention to the use of metaphors in medical discourse. After briefly introducing the recent approaches to the study of metaphors based on psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic theories, we propose a qualitative analysis of selected medical texts with three aims: (1) at a lexical level, to find out how commonly doctors use metaphors to name pathologies, and to classify such metaphors in relation to their linguistic type; (2) at a psycholinguistic level, to investigate if metaphors, when used to denominate an illness, use metaphoric mappings; (3) at a communicative level, to establish if do…

English for Nurses: Needs Analysis and Syllabus

In recent years, health profession degree courses entirely taught in English have become more and more frequent in Italy. Among these degree courses, the Associate Degree in Nursing has gradually spread in Italy since nursing is a profession that is highly required all over the world. As a matter of fact, Nursing is a profession that requires much specialized clinical competences and advanced communication skills (Schmidt 2003; Collins, 2005). From a linguistic standpoint, nurses have been defined as a sort of ‘communication broker’ (Bourhis et al. , 1989) becoming linguistic mediators between doctors and patients (Garone & Van de Craen, 2017) since they have both to understand the doct…

UN DISTURBO DELL'APPRENDIMENTO: LA DISLESSIA NELLA LINGUA ITALIANA E NELLA LINGUA INGLESE

The percentage of dyslexic students in Italy is lower than in the United Kingdom. In this article, after a brief analysis concerning the main dyslexia causes and symptoms, a differen - ce between Italian and English dyslexic will be made on a lin - guistic level. The linguistic aspects of English language will be analysed because they seem to be the main cause of the major prevalence of dyslexia in students speaking English.

LITERARY METAPHORS IN MEDICAL ENGLISH: LITERATURE AND MEDICAL ENGLISH

DISTURBI DEL LINGUAGGIO, DELL'APPRENDIMENTO E DEL COMPORTAMENTO

Il corpo in sofferenza

Lexicographic studies in medicine: Academic Word List for clinical case histories

Medical texts are often thought to pertain to a closed community, but how far the language used by that community overlaps with general academic lexis is unknown. We examined a corpus of clinical case histories using the software RANGE to characterise the lexis of clinical case histories quantitatively and present a wordlist for clinical medicine. Only 58% of the general academic wordlists are found in clinical texts but the 85% overlap with an important academic wordlist, the Coxhead 570, furnishes evidence for the academic nature of the lexis used for clinical cases in Medicine. There was little overlap (38%) between our clinical case wordlist and other wordlists of medical research artic…

The status of medical eponyms: advantages and disadvantages

The aim of this paper is to analyse how physicians use eponyms for naming the evolution of a scientific discovery in order to describe the different features of eponyms. In the first section a brief classification of medical eponym is given, attention is then turned to the main positive and negative aspects of these honorific names in the language of Medicine in a diachronic perspective with linguistic and ethical considerations.

IL BAMBINO E LE CASE FAMIGLIA

Perspectives in Medical English: an Introduction

Minor physical anomalies in children with autism spectrum disorder.

Abstract Aim To investigate the rate and topological profile of minor physical anomalies (MPAs) (prenatal errors of morphogenesis) in a group of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), in order to better set a temporal framing of embryological factors involved in the neurodevelopmental etiology. Method A new modified Waldrop scale and a mixed approach of computerized photogrammetry and classic anthroposcopy was used to detect the presence or absence of 41 MPAs in 24 children (mean age: 7 years; sex ratio: 22M:2F) with ASD and 24 healthy comparison subjects (mean age: 7 years; sex ratio: 19M:5F) selected with DSM IV and CARS. Results We found that children with ASD presenting MPAs (n =…

Metaphors in the mirror: The influence of teaching metaphors in a medical education programme

Medical students often face problems in using and understanding metaphors when communicating with a patient or reading a scientific paper. These figures of speech constitute an interpretative problem and students need key strategies to facilitate metaphor comprehension and disambiguation of meaning. This article examines how medical students' strategies of metaphor comprehension could be improved by specific teaching on metaphors using a Cognitive Linguistics approach. Medical students' ability to comprehend mirror neuron metaphors was assessed comparing the performance of students who did not receive any instruction about metaphoric extension strategies after a lesson on mirror neurons wit…

COVID-19 and its linguistic variants from Miss Rona to Boomer Remover

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an enormous impact on everyday language and has led to unprecedented linguistic innovation and lexical explosion, ranging from the medicalisation of everyday language to the creation of new word formations that have defined new situations and overcome the fear of an unknown disease. In this paper, after briefly introducing the main linguistic features of English neologisms created to define changes in life style during the pandemic, a survey of the main English monikers coined to rename COVID-19 will be given taking into account the most recent studies on the subject.

In tema di abuso a minori disabili: il trattamento terapeutico-abilitativo

A lexicographic Study: Medical Vocabulary in use

INTRODUCTION Information, research and new ideas in medicine are spread mainly by the written word. Therefore, reading and writing are fundamental skills in collecting information and building a wide knowledge base not only in the student population but even as practising physicians and specialists. Knowing lexical items is an important building block in developing both of these language skills. There are several different measures of lexicographic competence, such as the General Service List or GSL (West, 1953), Academic Word List or AWL (Laufer &Nation,1999; Coxhead, 2000) and Medical Academic Word List or MAWL (Wang, Liang & Ge, 2008). The purpose of this study is to measure lexical comp…

I diritti dei figli nati da incesto

I LINGUAGGI SPECIALISTICI: LA LINGUA INGLESE E IL MEDICAL ENGLISH

APPUNTI SUL BAMBINO E LO STRESS. LA MEDIAZIONE FAMILIARE E LA TERAPIA OCCUPAZIONALE

In quest’articolo l’autore presenta una breve analisi dei vari tipi di problema, dei meccanismi psicologici e cognitivi che sono coinvolti nella risoluzione di problem solving e delle principali teorie legate alle situazioni – problema. La situazione – problema verrà, quindi, analizzata in ambito sia psicologico sia linguistico.

La Società del XXII secolo: i nonni, i nipoti con e senza problemi e lo stato sociale

Gli AA. descrivono il ruolo e la tipologia dei nonni nella società del XXII secolo e le loro relazioni con i nipoti. Sottolineano anche le modificazioni socio-culturali avvenute negli ultimi tempi nelle dinamiche intergenerazionali e quelle indotte dal prolungamento della vita dopo il pensionamento. In relazioni a tali aspetti avanzano la proposta di una utilizzazione sociale dei nonni nella cura dei nipoti in relazione al fatto che i genitori sono assenti per lavoro dall'ambiente domestico per gran parte del giorno.

Science and news articles on mirror neurons: two degrees of popularization

The paper deals with the linguistic strategies used by authors with a different degree of specialised expertise (scientists, experts, science and general journalists) to popularize and re-contextualize the mirror neuron discovery in the online Scientific American and New York Times versions. In particular, aiming at a comparison between the two journals, the authors focused on those linguistic and interdiscoursive strategies adopted to popularize three main aspects for each article: the definition of mirror neurons, the explanation of their activation in the brain and their function in social interaction.