My principal research interests lie in the field of applied sociolinguistics, multi-modal discourse analysis and corpus linguistics. Broadly, I am interested in interdisciplinary approaches to professional communication, with a special emphasis on health communication. My present research, for example, focuses on multi-modal approaches to medical discourse. One strand of this health communication research involves a corpus linguistic exploration of electronic health messages: an examination of the health concerns communicated by contributors to medical professionals online. The research emphasis is on how these concerns are communicated to health professionals and what, in turn, their linguistic encoding tells us about individuals’ attitudes towards health and illness. For a brief overview of the findings, please see my broadcast ‘The Word Counter’ on You Tube. For a more detailed and extensive account of this research, please see my forthcoming (2013) book Adolescent Health Communication: A Corpus and Discourse Approach (Bloomsbury).Another strand of my research involves examining the phenomenon of medicalisation (the process whereby non-diseases are defined as diseases). Specifically, this area of my research uses critical multi-modal discourse to investigate the ways in which pharmaceutical companies and advertisers promote lifestyle drugs for benign conditions.
Photo of Sir Andrew Motion by Johnny Ring For a while now I’ve been working on a book that explores the relationship between health and reading (reading aloud in particular). Despite the numerous sloughs and impasses that attend the process…
Poetry and dementia: A brief interview with Sir Andrew Motion Read More »
On 1st February 2010 the writer Terry Pratchett, author of what he self-mockingly referred to as ‘inexplicably popular fantasy novels’, gave the 34th Richard Dimbleby Lecture. Somewhat grimly yet playfully titled Shaking Hands with Death, Pratchett’s talk offered a touching
Some thoughts on dementia and language: the intriguing case of metaphor Read More »
Tom’s blog on reading got me thinking about my own interest in and experiences of books. I, too, am a bibliophile – books feature constantly in my life, both professionally and outside of work. Indeed, as I write this very
On books and reading Read More »
Recently I saw an item on the news which reported on the therapeutic value of table tennis. Indulging in regular bouts of the game, according to new research, can lessen the symptoms of dementia and, potentially, even ward off its
Reading and dementia Read More »