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Contents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2025

Elena Semino ,
Paul Baker ,
Gavin Brookes ,
Luke Collins  and
Tony McEnery
Elena Semino
Affiliation:
Lancaster University
Paul Baker
Affiliation:
Lancaster University
Gavin Brookes
Affiliation:
Lancaster University
Luke Collins
Affiliation:
Lancaster University
Tony McEnery
Affiliation:
Lancaster University

Information

Type
Chapter
Information
Applying Corpus Linguistics to Illness and Healthcare , pp. v - vii
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NC
This content is Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC-BY-NC 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/cclicenses/

Contents

  1. List of Figures

  2. List of Tables

  3. Acknowledgements

  4. 1Introduction

    1. 1.1Why This Book?

    2. 1.2An Overview of Corpus Linguistic Analytical Techniques

    3. 1.3The Structure of This Book

  5. 2Research Questions

    1. 2.1Introduction

    2. 2.2Developing Exploratory Questions

    3. 2.3Developing Questions in Interaction with Stakeholders

    4. 2.4Working with a Set of Pregiven Questions from Non-academic Partners

    5. 2.5Conclusion

  6. 3Collecting Data

    1. 3.1Introduction

    2. 3.2Compiling a News Corpus about Obesity

    3. 3.3Working with Pre-existing Transcript Data from Healthcare Settings

    4. 3.4Building a Historical Corpus of Anti-vaccination Literature

    5. 3.5Conclusion

  7. 4Ethics

    1. 4.1Introduction

    2. 4.2Ethical Considerations When Studying Online Forums: Research on a Forum Dedicated to Pain

    3. 4.3Ethical Considerations When Working across Contexts and with Partners: Research on Public Discourses of Dementia

    4. 4.4Conclusion

  8. 5Interaction

    1. 5.1Introduction

    2. 5.2Co-constructed Humour on a Forum for People with Cancer

    3. 5.3Sequences of Communicative Purposes in an Online Anxiety Support Forum

    4. 5.4Conclusion

  9. 6Language Use and Identity

    1. 6.1Introduction

    2. 6.2Using Demographic Metadata

    3. 6.3Using Mentions of Identity in the Data

    4. 6.4Conclusion

  10. 7Change over Time

    1. 7.1Introduction

    2. 7.2Patient Feedback: Identifying Increasing and Decreasing Lexical Items over Time

    3. 7.3Representations of Obesity: Identifying Changing Topics over Time and Considering the Annual News Cycle

    4. 7.4Anxiety Forum: Age and Level of Experience as Types of Time

    5. 7.5Conclusion

  11. 8Historical Data

    1. 8.1Introduction

    2. 8.2Anti-vaccination Discourse in Nineteenth-Century England

    3. 8.3Representations around Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Early English Books Online

    4. 8.4Conclusion

  12. 9Representing the Experience of Illness

    1. 9.1Introduction

    2. 9.2Representing Anxiety

    3. 9.3Representing Cancer

    4. 9.4Conclusion

  13. 10Representing Social Actors

    1. 10.1Introduction

    2. 10.2Representing Obesity in the British National Press

    3. 10.3Investigating the Agency of Voices in Psychosis

    4. 10.4Conclusion

  14. 11Positions Legitimated

    1. 11.1Introduction

    2. 11.2Legitimation of Vaccine Hesitancy

    3. 11.3Legitimation of Patient Evaluations of Healthcare Services

    4. 11.4Conclusion

  15. 12Dissemination

    1. 12.1Introduction

    2. 12.2Working with an External Partner: The NHS Feedback Project

    3. 12.3Disseminating the Findings of a Corpus-Based Project on Metaphors and Cancer

    4. 12.4Conclusion

  16. 13Conclusions

    1. 13.1Introduction

    2. 13.2What Have We Learnt about Health Communication That We Did Not Know Before?

    3. 13.3What Advice Would We Pass on to Other Corpus Researchers Working in Health Communication?

    4. 13.4What Are the Limitations of the Corpus-Based Approach?

    5. 13.5Final Thoughts: What about the Future?

  17. Index

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