Applying Corpus Linguistics to Illness and Healthcare

by Elena Semino, Paul Baker, Gavin Brookes, Luke Collins, Tony McEnery

Overview

Communication is central to the experience of illness and the provision of healthcare. This book showcases the insights that can be gained into health communication by means of corpus linguistics – the computer-aided linguistic analysis of large datasets of naturally occurring language use known as 'corpora'. The book takes readers through the stages that they must go through to carry out corpus linguistic research on health communication, from formulating research questions to disseminating findings to interested stakeholders. It helps readers anticipate and deal with different kinds of challenges they may encounter, and shows the variety of applications of the methods discussed, from interactions in Accident and Emergency departments, to online discussions of mental illness, and press representations of obesity. Providing the reader with a wide range of clear case studies, it makes the relevant methods and findings accessible, engaging and inspiring. This title is also available open access on Cambridge Core.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781009477673
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	09/25/2025
Pages:	228
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

About the Author

Elena Semino is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University, and Director of the ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science. She is a Fellow of the UK's Academy of Social Sciences and has held Visiting Professorships at universities in China and Italy.

Paul Baker is Professor of Linguistics at Lancaster University. He has published widely on the application of corpus linguistics to the study of language, identity and health. He has written twenty-five books, including Using Corpora for Discourse Analysis (2006), The Language of Patient Feedback (2019) and Obesity in the News (2021). He is the commissioning editor of the journal Corpora.

Gavin Brookes is Reader and UKRI Future Leader Fellow in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University. He has published widely using corpus linguistic, critical, and multimodal approaches to discourse analysis, with a particular focus on health(care) contexts.

Luke Collins is a Senior Research Associate with the ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science. His work is concerned with applications of corpus approaches in health communication contexts and his research also addresses methodological challenges related to investigating digital discourses.

Tony McEnery is Distinguished Professor of Linguistics and English Language in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University and Advisory Professor at Shanghai International Studies University in China. He has published widely on corpus linguistics, including Corpus Linguistics (with Hardie, 2011) and Fundamental Principles of Corpus Linguistics (with Brezina, 2022).

Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. Research questions; 3. Collecting data; 4. Ethics; 5. Interaction; 6. Language use and identity; 7. Change over time; 8. Historical data; 9. Representing the experience of illness; 10. Representing social actors; 11. Positions legitimated; 12. Dissemination; 13. Conclusions.