1,720,997 research outputs found
‘Vaccines don’t make your baby autistic’: Arguing in favour of vaccines in institutional healthcare communication
No full textTransediting and its relevance to medical discourse
No full textTranslators are required to handle an ever-increasing volume of texts covering a myriad of genres and to perform intralingual, interlingual and intersemiotic communication activities once considered as lying beyond the confines of translation proper. The focus of attention in translation research is thus gradually shifting to explore translators’ mediating practices as they rewrite texts to fit the expectations of the recipient audiences. Transediting is a form of rewriting that is particularly recipient-oriented and where the translator’s interventionist role is a central feature. It is also an integral part of written medical production in English requiring specialist knowledge and expertise and can only contribute to a successful outcome if there is cooperation with the medical expert. The composite skills of a transeditor working in the medical field include proficient and specialised bilingual language competence, specialised editorial and writing skills, awareness of the norms and conventions specific to scientific journal publishing and a sufficiently developed knowledge of the subject to be able rewrite the paper in accordance with the expectations of the recipient audience. Vital, too, are diplomatic skills in providing constructive criticism to authors and a high ethical standard. Successful cooperation depends very much on understanding the point of view, expectancies and one’s counterpart and establishing a certain degree of shared ground
Medical web encyclopaedias: Linguistic aspects and ethical implications
No full textThe aim of this paper was to examine the language used in two digital health encyclopaedias and its ethical implications: NHS Choices’ Health A-Z (http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Pages/ hub.aspx) and MedlinePlus Health Topics (https://medlineplus. gov/healthtopics.html). Both are offered to the general public for free by entities sponsored and endorsed by governments. Two sample entries were analysed for this pilot study. One, CANCER, was selected for its relevance as a mass condition, the other, EUTHANASIA / END OF LIFE ISSUES, for its significance in current ethical debates. The analysis was conducted following methods in Discourse Analysis within an Applied Linguistics perspective. The investigation has identified different linguistic strategies employed when dealing with ethically-connoted health issues as opposed to mass conditions. A focus on the ethics of (healthy) choices also emerged, based on the ample use of the adjective “healthy” and lexicon from the semantic field of healthy lifestyles
A Framework of Analysis for the Investigation of Psycholinguistic Constructs in Online Doctor-Patient Interaction
No full textAmong the several technological tools available, medical forums are widely used by e-patients. The objective of this study is to investigate some specific sociological constructs and their linguistic realisations in patient posts, and to observe if they may have an impact on adherence to therapies, in line with studies conducted in offline settings.
Indeed, the relationship between adherence and the type of adherence message has been lengthily investigated. Some of the psycholinguistic constructs which have been used to understand adherence are control orientation, agency and affect (Bartlett Ellis, Connor & Marshall 2014). A similar model is suggested in this study, including the broader notion of attitude derived from appraisal
theory (Martin & White 2005). Thus, patient posts have been coded with the aim of identifying control orientation, agency, and attitude (plus their subsets) and their linguistic realisations in order to understand patient conceptualisation of adherence messages.
The data show that these constructs even arise in spontaneous interaction and without the use of specifically designed interviews or questionnaires. Indeed, unprompted posts also display the manifestation of these constructs, with control realisation (CR) emerging particularly frequently. Both internal control realisation (ICR) and external control realisation (ECR) are present. Drawing on studies focusing on offline settings, it is possible to assume that patients displaying ECR are more likely to fail to adhere to a therapy and thus need particular attention and encouragement in managing their disease
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Multilingual perspectives on Italian public healthcare websites
No full textStarting from the 1990s, Italy, like other European countries, has been facing calls for greater local autonomy in its political institutions, including its public healthcare system. This has led to the devolution of healthcare services to each of its twenty administrative regions, which independently set up their own local health structures, or enterprises (It. transl. aziende sanitarie locali, Asl) and hospitalisation facilities. The entire process got refl ected at the formal level in the web-interfaces established by these local structures to reach out to their users/patients, thus sometimes producing non-homogeneous communicative approaches.
This paper analyses all the Italian bi-/multilingual regional healthcare websites. This relevant identity-defi ning descriptor (bi-/multi-lingualism) can contribute to gaining insight into the way public healthcare institutions tackle the quite recent waves of immigrants from Eastern European, Far Eastern, North African and Arab countries to Italy. Results highlight the presence of few multilingual documents, especially in English. Most of these are linguistically accessible at a basic level, but show signifi cant ambiguities that can often prevent full or partial comprehension. There are mostly translations rather than original texts, which proves to be a frequent but debatable feature in Italian Asl communication
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