1,721,009 research outputs found
G. Tessuto, Digital medical science publishing and healthcare communication systems: opportunities and challenges (forthcoming)
No full textG. Tessuto (con S. Maci, M. J. Zerbe), Communicating Medical Science in the Digital Age: Culture, Knowledge, Expertise, Practices. Nella collana internazionale Medical Discourse and Communication (Direttore G. Tessuto)
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Framing dietary patterns in professional sources of web genres : verbal and visual modes of communication
No full textOver the last few years, the need to address public health issues has been very high on the governments' (national and international) political agendas, and researchers have focused on understanding the important social factors that affect people's health. In conjunction with these factors, the fluid and fast-paced arena of Internet communication has opened up new opportunities for online discourse where greater emphasis is placed on healthy eating behaviors and quality of life through a variety of professional document genres.
With these Internet genres under focus, the aim of this study is to examine how healthy eating patterns and lifestyles for people are discursively constructed in professional sources of web genres. To this end, the study focuses on the Diet and Well-being for a Healthy Life professional document genre published on the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition Foundation's (BCFN Foundation) website in 2012. The importance of this textual source for case study lies in its status as accredited professional artefact produced by the BCFN Foundation, which acts as an information resource and as a bridge between both science and research by collecting knowledge and expertise in focus areas that form the subject of scientific publications, recommendations and debates. The chosen document for analysis, based on the genre's criteria of purpose and form, therefore provides a useful material for understanding how BCFN researchers illustrate and communicate the target issues. Using the methodological frameworks of Multimodal Discourse Analysis (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001; Kress and van Leeuwen 2006; Van Leeuwen 2005, Jewitt 2009; Kress 2010) and Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough and Wodak 1997; Fairclough 2010), we examine elements of verbal communication that contribute to an understanding of the meanings and social significance of text alongside elements of visual communication. While still maintaining a broad orientation to the CDA dimensions of discourse practice and socio-cultural practice of communicative events, our principal study of the formal dimension of text in areas of language and imagery elucidates the formation of social identities and social relations along with the ideological underpinnings of social practices in discourse contexts. Through explication of the different multimodal elements of communicative utterances, our analysis shows that healthy eating patterns and quality of life are complex issues linked to wider social, cultural, political, economic and environmental arguments. Indeed, multimodal texts used for dealing with such global issues make an impact on behaviour change and resultant health outcomes, and discursively imply that individuals should engage with a range of health care practices, including healthier diets and controlling non-communicable diseases. From this perspective, engaging individuals with modifications in dietary behaviors for healthy lifestyles and social practices involves structuring the discourses of health and science as is necessary to emphasize certain values and ideologies, and the scientific knowledge gained about the interactions between nutrients and health-related issues is relevant to highlight how effective the value of health promotion is for an individual person, and consequently generate a health-conscious identity and improved living conditions within and across multimodal discourses
G. Tessuto, Constructing Scholarly Ethos in Non-mainstream Medical Research Writing Discursive and Linguistic Strategies
No full textAt a time when mainstream, biomedical research and practice continue to frame
the discourse about health, non-mainstream, or alternative/complementary medical
research is now gaining ground in some academic publishing venues. While
non-mainstream researchers are likely to work twice as hard to survive on a very
uneven playing field, they must also develop rational appeals to believability in
order to be persuasive in their own writing. In this chapter, I set out to explore
the discursive and linguistic strategies employed by alternative/complementary
medicine scholars to see how and to what extent they convey a scholarly ethos
that entails building their own authority, credibility, and expertise and recognizing
the values of their academic community. Taking a corpus-driven approach to
academic articles in this field, I look at how authors project themselves and their
work and persuade their audience about their arguments and perspectives in this
form of writing. To do so, I rely on the cover term of evaluation in academic discourse
analytical research to examine stance-making resources for their linguistic
realization in both quantitative and qualitative terms and to identify the attendant
meanings for interaction and persuasion that establish the writers’ ethos on the
topics they discuss. Conclusions are drawn about the relevance of such findings
for discourse activities enacted by the non-mainstream academic community
G. Tessuto, Building credibility and visibility in alternative and complementary medicine: a linguistic and discursive perspective
No full text"For the resaons given above, I consider that the court should...": a linguistic analysis of argumentation in Opinions of the British and Italian Advocates-General at the Court of Justice of the European Union
No full textSpreading Contaminations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Health, Illness, and Disease
No full textLegally dead, illegally frozen? The legal aspects of cryonics as discursively constructed online by providers and the media
No full textCryonics is defined as the practice or technique of cryogenically preserving a person’s body with the aim of reviving it in the future; esp. the cryogenic preservation of a person with an incurable disease until such time as a cure is found. As such, it is a practice that mixes viable existing technology, i.e. cryopreservation with currently unattainable objectives such as resuscitation from death. Its hybrid nature makes it scientifically questionable yet highly fascinating at a popular level. This is well reflected in the number of publications that have dealt with it since its inception, in the 1960s. The legal aspects revolving around cryonics also emerge from the frequency, this time quite high, of the word legal. They seem to regard specific cases, though, and not the legality of cryonics in itself, which could be expected since, as seen in the Background section above, the practice is far from regulated
Discursive illusions and manipulations in legal blogs on medically assisted procreation: the case Parrillo v. Italy
No full textThis chapter sets to overview the European Court of Human Rights’ judgment Parrillo v. Italy and its representation in blogs to analyse the phenomena of discursive alterations in legal blogs covering the controversial issue of embryo donation. The study applies the popularisation framework to the transfer of information from the institutionalised context of the court, represented by its final judgment, to the less regulated web-domain of legal blogs, or blawgs.
The general methodological framework is Critical Discourse Analysis. Specifically, the study applies van Dijk’s triangulation approach and the notion of discursive manipulations or illusions, created by subjective reconceptualisation of the perceptions of objective realities.
The aim is to identify the complex mechanisms that shape the discursive illusion and that could lead to readership manipulation in the popularised context of blogs as compared to the institutional settings of judgments. This aim is verified on a small ad hoc created corpus of ten blog posts and the final judgment on the case accompanied by six concurring and dissenting judicial opinions. The study also uses the legal summary of the judgment and the Court’s press release for consultative purposes.
The findings show that blogs employ a vast array of techniques that could be defined as ideological manipulations or discursive illusions in that bloggers use legitimate information in a selective manner, leading to a one-sided representation of the case. In addition, the blogs provide subjective interpretations, both textual and paratextual, attempting to pass them as objective, and trigger selective appraisal patterns, including through the use of evaluative language, specifically in regard of responsibility attribution
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