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Extending Research Horizons in Applied Linguistics

Between Interdisciplinarity and Methodological Diversity

Edited by
Hadrian Aleksander Lankiewicz [+–]
University of Gdańsk
Hadrian Lankiewicz, D. Lit. in Applied Linguistics and PhD in American Literature, currently occupies the position of a professor and the head of the Department of Applied Linguistics and at the University of Gdańsk, Poland. His scientific interests oscillate between History, American Literature and Applied Linguistics, with the primary focus on language acquisition and the methodology of teaching foreign languages. In recent years, his research has been inspired by the application of an ecological metaphor to the study of language and its learning. Drawing on the concept of multi-competence and political autonomy in the process of language learning, he concentrated on issues of marginalization, empowerment and legitimization in the use of English as a foreign language.
Piotr Romanowski
University of Warsaw

The book is targeted at professional scholars as well as language students who plan their own research in the fuzzy field of applied linguistics, while working on their degree papers, or doing an any academic work related to language study. The uniqueness of the volume consists in its methodological character which is made operational and thus the book may function as a methodological manual.

The academically fashionable and catchy word of interdisciplinarity is frequently made void in the research perspective. Comprehended a mark of academic liberalism, standing for anything goes, it is basically questioned by orthodox minds adhering to the compartmentalization of scientific disciplines. This volume tries to bridge the gap at least threefold. It offers theoretical justification for crossing disciplinary borders in methodological terms, presents an application of adopted methods or techniques form a different discipline and finally considers research benefits resulting from such an approach. These three elements, around which each chapter is organized, account for the integrationist aspect of interdisciplinarity.

The volume includes eight chapters dedicated to a selected methodology incorporating an empirical avenue coming from outside of the linguistic domain, yet it is applied to linguistic issues which are interdisciplinary in their character. They either occupy a contested space between disciplines, or need an interdisciplinary insight, which ultimately imparts a more comprehensive understanding.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Deconstructing Hate Speech Messages by Means of Dual Character Concepts: Changing Public Language Awareness with Recourse to Philosophical Concepts [+–]
Anna Szczepaniak-Kozak
Adam Mickiewicz University
Anna Szczepaniak-Kozak is Associate Professor (Ph.D., D.Litt.) at the School of Languages and Literatures at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, and the Deputy Editor in Chief for Glottodidactica. An International Journal of Applied Linguistics. Anna’s main research interests are within the field of applied linguistics, particularly interlanguage (acquisitional) pragmatics, foreign language instruction and teaching-oriented studies of hate speech. She is the author of three books, the co-editor of six monographs, and the author of around 50 scientific papers. In years 2014–2016, she conducted research and training activities in a project financed by the European Commission titled RADAR (Regulating Anti-Discrimination and Anti-Racism). RADAR team conducted research and training activities pertaining to racially-motivated hate speech. She has also assisted as an e-learning platform moderator and materials contributor in two other European Council projects devoted to the development learning materials helping migrants and host nationals in contact with migrants to improve their intercultural communication skills.
This chapter applies the notion of dual character concepts, which were originally proposed by experimental philosophers and cognitive psychologists (Knobe et al., 2013; Del Pinal & Reuter, 2017; Reuter, 2019), to discuss how racist and xenophobic hate speech could be more easily identified, especially for the purpose of raising public awareness about it and persecuting it by law enforcement bodies. This type of research has not been followed extensively so far, except for few studies which delve into the reality of blacks who suffer from racism and white racists, e.g. Shelby (2002), Ikuenobe (2011&2018). Most terms and concepts are either descriptive or normative in character. A descriptive word refers to something observable or experienced, whereas a normative one bears an evaluative content, that is, its meaning derives from norms or standards. In this sense, a cat is a descriptive term while terrific is a normative one. Although this seems a neat delineation, some terms and concepts do not fall easily into it. This is so not only because norms and standards are socially agreed upon and dependent on individual features, e.g. one’s background, intelligence, education. In fact, the normative dimension very often represents certain abstract values associated with the corresponding descriptive elements (Knobe et al., 2013). This means that some terms and concepts are “part descriptive, part normative” and these parts are “related but independent” (Reuter, 2019: 1). Some of such combinatory concepts also contain the idealized social function which the person, object or notion fulfils (Leslie, 2015). Finally, when a normative term denotes human attributes, it often includes the component of “the commitment to fulfil the idealized function associated with that role” (Reuter, 2019: 4). The complex nature of dual character concepts can be exemplified by the word mentor. This word denotes a colleague who assists a less experienced person in their job (the descriptive content). However, social expectances which a mentor needs to fulfil are value- and norm-driven as well. For example, being somebody who leads a mentee through meanderings of professional and personal development means that such a person should also be trustful, patient and supportive. Personal commitment is also expected – such a person should show emotional involvement in assisting the other to develop. All in all, a person can officially be called a mentor, but if they do not conform to social expectances, they are not true mentors and are not perceived as such. Concepts like mentor are of a dual character, which means that they “they encode not only a descriptive dimension but also an independent normative dimension for categorization” (Reuter, 2019: 1). What I intend to illustrate in this chapter is that individuals who spread hate speech argue that discriminatory terms which they use should be treated as only descriptive in character and thus they try to avoid judicial or social responsibility for propagating it. Additionally, as Wodak (2015) posits, public personas, including politicians, tend to argue in favour of their innocence or ignorance, claiming that they are not aware of the value-ascribing potential which their hateful words bear. This way they escape not only public contempt and, what is worse, they are often acquitted at courts. Studying hate speech messages from the normative standpoint could not only increase our knowledge and awareness of the essence of hate speech but primarily could provide law enforcement personnel (police officers, judges) with a more precise terminological apparatus for their daily functioning, especially argumentation of cases (Domselaar, 2018).

Chapter 2

Focus Groups Discussion as a Perfect Fit for Ecological Research Applied to Get an Insight into Critical Language Awareness of L2 Users [+–]
Hadrian Aleksander Lankiewicz
University of Gdańsk
Hadrian Lankiewicz, D. Lit. in Applied Linguistics and PhD in American Literature, currently occupies the position of a professor and the head of the Department of Applied Linguistics and at the University of Gdańsk, Poland. His scientific interests oscillate between History, American Literature and Applied Linguistics, with the primary focus on language acquisition and the methodology of teaching foreign languages. In recent years, his research has been inspired by the application of an ecological metaphor to the study of language and its learning. Drawing on the concept of multi-competence and political autonomy in the process of language learning, he concentrated on issues of marginalization, empowerment and legitimization in the use of English as a foreign language.
Language research of the so-called discursive turn has incorporated the analysis of human narratives as a legitimate narrative knowledge (Jameson, 1984: xix) pertaining to the way of data collection, data itself and a method of data analysis. Hence, the methodology of social sciences and humanities postulates the notion of the “narrative turn” (De Fina, 2009). Yet much of narrative based research is still executed according to structural tenets, e.g. a remarkable body of conversational analysis. The assumption of human agency and activity, typical for the “post perspective” necessitates knowledge building paradigm to de-vest the researcher from his/her centrality and scientism requiring the application of recognized scientific methods informed by normativity and the rigor of Occham’s razor parsimony. Additionally, face validity of any research entails the need to account for the dynamic nature of phenomena to integrate the observer and the observed. To counteract the indeterminacy principle, it is important to approach any problem via participatory action research. One type of research methodology promoting active experimentation is focal research groups based on discussions and interaction among selected individuals moderated by the researcher. The role of a researcher as a “facilitator” or “moderator” makes this method markedly different from traditional interviews and allows obtaining data different form traditional one-to-one interviews, even if one applies the technique of open questions. This method or technique, as it is inconsistently referred to, has been known since the 1940’s in sociology or psychology but has become very popular across other disciplines such as education, communication and media studies, feminist research, health research and marketing research (cf. Nyumba, Wilson, Derrick, & Mukherjee, 2018: 21). The rationale for this methodology is very much compatible with ecolinguistic research to account for the phenomenological orientation of any research endeavor since, as Kramsch (2002) metaphorically puts it, it is impossible “to tell the dancer from the dance”. Such an approach helps maintain ecological validity and postulates an inherently critical/ethical stance towards doing academic research (van Lier, 2004: 168). We apply it into the study of critical language awareness of L2 users with regard to the notion of legitimization of translingual processes of bi- and multilingual language users and resulting from it empowerment of the L2 user (Lankiewicz et al. 2016). The application of qualitative data analysis techniques, such as discourse analysis (Potter & Wetherell, 1987), content and ethnographic analytic techniques (Morgan, 1988) as well as critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995), offers invaluable insights into critical language awareness of L2 users. The findings highlight a very (inter)subjective and dynamic nature of the method and its data analysis techniques. The chapter ultimately presents an array of methodological advantages derived from the application of this methodology to this kind of research. It, among others, underscores a non-reductionist way of data collection and their analysis and, on the other hand, helps to delve into language awareness of L2 users, envisioned as an attitudinal and perceptional continuum in which the linguistically uncritical mind believes that language is a structurally fixed monolith, geographically defined, communicatively neutral and unambiguous as well as normatively unequivocal. Alternatively, the critical mind presupposes that language is unfinalizable, transformative in nature and perceives it more as a way of an activity, i.e. posits languaging in the place of language.

Chapter 3

The Application of Projective Techniques to Raising Language and Language Learning Awareness of Plurilingual Language Learners at the Tertiary Level [+–]
Emilia Wąsikiewicz-Firlej
Adam Mickiewicz University
Emilia Wąsikiewicz-Firlej, D. Lit. in linguistics, PhD in applied linguistics and MA in English studies, is Associate Professor in the Department of Ecolinguistics and Communicology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. Her research delves into applied linguistics and communication studies, focusing on professional communication, intercultural communication and specialised discourse. Emilia Wąsikiewicz-Firlej has published over 40 academic papers, including a monograph on corporate communication, journal articles, book chapters and edited collections. The scholar is a frequent presenter at national and international conferences. She has also delivered guest lectures abroad, e.g. in Italy, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Spain. Before joining academia, she worked as a marketing and public relations specialist
The chapter takes a look at the projective techniques and their application across disciplines. It goes back to the psychoanalytical foundations of the concept and traces its historical development. Various types of projective techniques are presented, followed by a critical discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of their employment in research. The very concept of “projection” is attributed to Sigmund Freud (Breuer and Freud, 1895). It involves transferring (projecting) unconscious and frequently suppressed beliefs to another person or object in order to protect one’s ego. The term “projective techniques”, advanced by Frank (1939), might be basically defined as questioning techniques “that depersonalize the question to the respondent thereby desensitizing the respondent to the answer they give and deactivating their conscious defences about the answer they give” (Das, 2018: 10) The first applications of the techniques took place within the field of clinical psychology, where they were mostly used in psychoanalysis or personality assessment. Within a decade they were adopted to management and marketing research. In fact, nowadays their usage in consumer and marketing communication research has its heyday and is often considered to be superior to other research methods (cf. Kaczmarek et al., 2013). To some extent, projection techniques have been also adopted to linguistic research (e.g. Labov attitude research), however, contemporarily their use in this field is rather marginalized. This could be explicated by certain controversies surrounding their application in psychometric testing as well as a massive paradigm shift towards the quantitative research approach in the last decades of the previous century. The main premise of this chapter, however, is that their use in linguistic research should be revisited as they offer a unique potential for obtaining deep, meaningful responses from respondents. This is particularly valid in the case of research on sensitive issues such as e.g. one’s ethnic, cultural or family background. The full potential of the projective techniques will be exemplified by a study on the language portraits (Busch, 2018; Kusters and Meulder, 2019) of plurilingual language learners at the tertiary level of education in order to show how they can and enhance reflection and self- expression through verbal and visual modes and reduce social desirability bias.

Chapter 4

Collaborative Research in Raising Translation Competence among Language Students [+–]
Małgorzata Godlewska
University of Gdańsk
Małgorzata Godlewska, PhD in literary studies, assistant professor in the Department of Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies of the University of Gdańsk, Poland. Her scientific interests encompass contemporary literature, with a particular focus on dialogism and intertextuality. She is currently conducting research on literary and audio-visual translation from the perspectives of the translation competence model and translation acquisition model. Her work reflects her attempts to create an interdisciplinary research model which would apply literary and linguistic tools in the analysis of multimodal texts in the field of translation studies.
This chapter rests on the idea that the phenomenon of collaborative research belongs to the most prolific and versatile research methods in our times. This method owes its universality to the contemporary imperative for networking, professional flexibility, and, in the first place, the growing conception of studying and learning as a social and cultural process. Rooted in pedagogical studies, the term collaborative research has become prevalent across a variety of scientific disciplines including cognitive psychology (Dillenbourg, 1999; Mercier, 2010), business and management (Blundo, Simon, 2016; Loon, 2016 ), music and music education (Westerlund, 2013), information and communication technologies (Adams, 2005; Anastasiades, 2009; Dillenbourgh, 1999; Dimarco, 2010), and healthcare (Croker, Smith, Fisher, 2016; Raney, Lasky, Scott, 2017). This chapter will explore the applicability of the collaborative research model in humanities, in the field of translation studies, and teaching translation in particular. The theoretical part of the chapter is indebted to the seminal works by Lev Vygotsky, who introduces collaborative learning as a socio-cultural phenomena shaped by interactions with others (1978), and to Johnson and Johnson and their concept of five principles for successful group work (1975, 1999). Apart from these early examples of research in the area of collaboration in pedagogy, this chapter builds its theoretical foundation on the latest publications redefining contemporary education through the prism of collaboration as its prerequisite (Rutherford, 2014; DiMarco, Luzzatto, 2010; Adams, 2005; Frey, Everlove, Fisher, 2009). In the practical part of the chapter, the collaborative research method will be applied so as to analyse the process of increased linguistic and non-linguistic competences of the translator (Małgorzewicz, 2004) among a group of students trained in the area of translation studies. The didactic aim of the research is to establish one well-informed rendition of the text, while the methodological aim is to determine the moment of the increased translation competence (PACTE, 2003) in the act of translation communication by means of microgenesis, the analysis of the students’ conversation.

Chapter 5

Languaging, Language and Interactivity in Playing a Card Game – a Multimodal Event Analysis [+–]
Grzegorz Grzegorczyk
University of Gdańsk
Grzegorz Grzegorczyk, PhD in linguistics and currently an assistant professor at the Department of Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies of the University of Gdańsk, Poland. His scientific interests focus on interactivity, dialogicality and languaging as emerging in educational, therapeutic and coaching conversations. His current research is in two domains, dialogically constructed learning spaces in academic tutoring and agency and linguistic interactivity in coaching. He chooses video ethnographic methods to collect data for multimodal analysis where he observes how interbodily dynamics and languaging contribute to speakers co-ordinate in their communicative and sense-making activities. Inspired by Love’s concept of two orders of language, Steffensen’s understanding of interactivity and Cowley’s distributed approach to language he concentrates on pico-scale events in interpersonal synergies which constitute talk.
Despite advances in linguistic study and the relational turn which we observe in research and description of the phenomenon of language mainstream research is, as before, (more or less heavily) tinted with Written Language Bias (cf. Linell 2019). Despite perspective shift which occurred in the late 20th century towards spoken and interactional aspect (also referred to by an increasing number of scholars as ‘languaging’) these new approaches adopted the old monologistic paradigm. Communication is viewed as a series of actions exchanged between individuals who act according to their individual intentions and are subject to conditions such as gender, age, background, status, etc. as contextually stable properties. Discourse in monologistic take (even in Discourse Analysis or Conversational Analysis) is understood as a process in which mentally functioning individuals and social structures are autonomous and mutually independent entities (Linell 1998: 7). By placing emphasis on structural organisation of linguistic interaction (‘talk-in-interaction’) monologism overlooks the fact that when individuals language together they display mutual dynamic interdependencies as “actors-in-specific interactions and contexts […] invoked by and emergent with (inter)actions”. (Linell 1998: 8). This is why in this chapter we intend to give more attention to what makes language special: its ontogenetic contingency on interaction between speakers and its essential value as an experiential, enacted and maintained flow that is changed by the real-time activity of interacting human agents. By so doing we will be able to turn towards active situated processes (e.g. conversational interactions or sense-making activities) instead of analysing a set of ‘linguistic products’ or static structures. As a consequence we will follow Rączaszek-Leonardi’s postulate “language must be viewed as radically heterogeneous and as spread across space, time and bodies” (Rączaszek-Leonardi, 2009: 178) and we go to investigate people as they “do language” rather than “use” it. As people connect the past, the present and the future, the different time scales enable their bodies to talk to each other, to listen to talking others (and selves), and to read and write texts. Apart from such obviously “linguistic” activities, human beings also become engaged in language-based activities such as task solving, thinking aloud, doing self-talk, giving and interpreting signs, etc. In short, they “do” language. This also accords with the view that the most important things in human lives happen between persons, rather than within or without them (cf. Sidorkin 1999: 11). If so, it follows that the effectiveness of being an effective communicator is contingent upon how conversing agents create an interactional dialogical space and ‘language’ in it. On this view, we find that the epistemic results conversing agents enjoy are not yielded by the “use” and “processing” of symbolic forms but by their agency, interactivity and languaging. We therefore claim that language is an activity: as such, it is not “a rational item of knowledge that the mind deploys to express inner rationality” (Evans 2018, 10) but, rather, dynamical, embodied (non-abstract), existing on different timescales (multiscalar) (Steffensen and Cowley 2010) and partly non-local (Love 2004; Thibault 2011). Thinking and language emerge through the interactivity, or sense saturated coordination (Steffensen 2013) that couples agents to their social and physical environments. The term ‘languaging’ direct attention to the fact that bodily and situational processes in the here-and-now and their organization across different spatial and temporal scales are fundamental in communication and sense-making (e.g. Love 2017). In order to illustrate these claims we will conduct a series of experiments in which a group of students will be video recorded as they play a board game Codenames whose mechanics is based on linguistic interaction. When analysing the recordings we will be interested in the contingencies the participants hinge on in their dialogical exchanges to build consensual domains in which they establish meanings and strategies for making them explicit to other players. By applying Multimodal Event Analysis we will address the pico-scale of dialogical interactional dynamics of the participants cooperating in a problem space reaching an insight into the nature of a linguistic task. As language is distributed by nature (e.g. Cowley 2011, Steffensen 2016) these dynamics will include the synchrony of physical setting, material artefacts, interbodily dynamics between the participants (especially in relation to gaze and the manual handling of objects), and verbal patterns that prompt them to simulate themselves and each other towards the satisfactory outcome. Our interest will be in the way the players as languaging agents organise their interactivity (sense-saturated coordination) and how languaging as prompted by the situational conditions of the game facilitates their sense-making processes. Unlike in the game itself, in our study we focus on participant’s efficiency, not effectiveness. In this way the goals of participants in the experiment and those the researcher will be radically different which should allow for fairly objective view of what happens. In this study we aim to put to test Van den Herik’s claim that “linguistic knowledge should be conceived of as practical knowledge – or knowing-how – rather than theoretical knowledge – or knowing-that” (Van den Herik 2019: 60). On a more theoretical level this should find echo in Mulcaster’s 500-year-old insight that “languaging enables us to understand” and, in so doing, enables humans to engage actively with each other.

Chapter 6

Integrating Duethnography with Ethnolinguistics in the Endeavour to Reconstruct the Profiles of Education in the Discourse of Third Year Students of Linguistics: A Case Study [+–]
Magdalena Grabowska
University of Gdansk
Magdalena Grabowska holds a PhD in linguistics. She currently works as assistant professor and deputy head in the Department of Applied Linguistics, University of Gdansk, Poland. Her interests focus on enthnographic linguistics, specifically on the study of sensitive issues which appeal for social heed, identity and religion being the case in point. Integrating ethnographic methodology into sociolinguistic research she is particularly interested in reconstructing commonsensical definitions, one with fuzzy categorial boundaries and experiential basis.

All words have the “taste” of a profession, a genre, a tendency, a party, a particular work, a particular person, a generation, an age group, the day and hour. Each word tastes of the context and contexts in which it has lived its socially charged life (Bakhtin, 1981:293). The quoted passage from Bakhtin brings to the fore a very essential property of language, namely its socially established ties. Ahearn (2013) strongly contradicts the long-held belief about language as a neutral means of communication and offers a view on it as a conglomerate of socially-determined practices. Reversing the situation, the author notes, we can view human interactions as affected by the functioning of language which mediates the sphere of communication between its users. This is not to say, however, that the study of language systems should cease (Ahearn, 2013). Quite the contrary, the contribution of formal linguistics to the study of language systems still holds its value, yet, as Duranti (1997) claims, now the scholarly focus should be on the touch points between grammar and the sphere of society, politics and emotions. With this in mind, we may seek to embrace research methods which offer opportunities to study socially and culturally-interfaced language properties. The proposed research method, known as duoethnography, encourages people of different stance to reconceptualise their understanding of particular phenomena in the course of interaction (Werbińska, 2018). Although the method is traditionally associated with the realm of researchers, its application may extend to encompass a collaborative researcher-student context. Once people gain the opportunity to interact in dialogic circumstances, they discover the need to reflect upon their past experiences and attitudes. This, in the word of Pinar (2004), may evoke self-reflection which in turn yields a transformative result. The present study focuses on the issue of education, a topic that seems to occupy the attention of students, however with varying intensity and to a different degree. Hence it would be interesting to learn how students define and evaluate this notion. More importantly, through dialogic interaction we will try to examine whether its participants develop deeper reflection about the notion. The main thrust of the current chapter is directed towards the reconstruction of a commonsensical picture of education in the narratives of third year students of linguistics. The data for analysis will be collected in the course of student-student interactions (approx. 7 B.A. seminar students will be involved) that will take the form of short, recorded interviews with peer students in which the participants will try to respond to a basic question: “What does education mean to you, personally?”.

Chapter 7

Sentiment Analysis for Qualitative Research in Applied Linguistics [+–]
Karolina Rudnicka
University of Gdańsk
Karolina Rudnicka. PhD in linguistics obtained from the University of Freiburg, Germany, in 2019, MA in applied linguistics obtained in 2009 from the University of Warsaw, four years of professional experience as a translator/interpreter/lecturer (2009-2013). She currently works as an assistant professor at the Institute of Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies at the University of Gdańsk, Poland. Her scientific interests include i) the application of corpus linguistics in research and teaching, ii) the study of different genres of English and German with an aim of detecting larger cross-linguistic trends and new phenomena, iii) the use of quantitative methods to complement qualitative studies.
In the times when more people than ever before are able to publicly share their knowledge, express their opinions, make commentaries and share pieces of information on every subject possible, researchers in the field of linguistics interested in this kind of output might feel they are faced with too much data to be able to work with. At the same time, the diversity and size of data might still be tempting to be dealt with, as it offers hope for larger trends or important results being hidden somewhere in there. One of novel possibilities is brought by sentiment analysis, also termed as opinion-mining, a notion which refers to “the mining of opinions of individuals, their appraisals, and feelings in the direction of certain objects, facts and their attributes” (Pawar et al. 2016). In an exemplary application of sentiment analysis, answers to open-ended questions are processed with the help of purpose-oriented language ontologies. As a result, information about, e.g. attitude of employees towards their company is successfully inferred. There are a few highly-specialised companies which offer “intelligent” high-quality sentiment analysis to business and governmental customers (e.g. Chenope or Clarabridge). The chapter presents methodological input of sentiment analysis to the field of applied linguistics and discusses problems pertaining to its applications ranging from doing research (also by people without a degree in computational science) to training of future linguists. In particular, the language users (L1 and L2) taking part in the experiment are asked to assess numerous text samples with regard to different criteria pertaining to their textual complexity (e.g. Štajner & Mitkov 2012). The online survey being filled has form of open-ended questions – to enable the participants to give any answer they reckon is appropriate. The answers are processed with the use of a free online tool for sentiment analysis. The obtained results are discussed and compared with a control sample – the surveys which have been assessed by the Author in a purely qualitative, manual way only.

Chapter 8

The Four Perspectives Model for Psychological/Psychiatric Case Formulations in Analysing the Discourse of Clinical-diagnostic Case Reporting [+–]
Magdalena Zabielska
Adam Mickiewicz University
Magdalena Zabielska, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociolinguistics and Discourse Studies at the Faculty of English at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. She is particularly interested in the issue of the patient’s presence in specialist medical publications in the context of the patient-centred approach to medical practice. She has published a number of papers regarding case-reporting genres.

Numerous studies conducted so far in broadly understood healthcare communication which have drawn on the theories from the neighbouring disciplines such as the sociology of medicine, social psychology, philosophy of medicine, medical anthropology or medical ethics, have proven to be effective in tapping into the construction of professional and lay identities as well as into the very nature of communication in this particularly sensitive context (Watts 2008, 2010). In the current chapter, the four perspectives model, originally developed for streamlining the construction of case formulations in psychology and psychiatry, will be applied as a tool in studying the language of clinical-diagnostic case reporting. A case report as a written medical genre discusses unknown diseases, their new aspects or anything novel about a specific treatment or drug use. On the other hand, case formulations, psychological/psychiatric equivalents of clinical-diagnostic case reports, “involve turning a patient’s narrative and all the information derived from examinations, interviews with parents and teachers, and medical and school reports into a coherent and not necessarily lengthy story that will help to develop a treatment plan” (Henderson and Martin 2015). The four perspectives model outlines four elements key to the complete description of a patient, their condition and following treatment, namely disease, dimensions, perspective and the life story (Winters et al. 2007; Havighurst and Downey 2009). What lies at the heart of this approach is that it views psychological and social factors as integral elements of each case, thus emphasising the differentiating features of psychology and psychiatry as disciplines. “[P]sychiatrists for the most part cannot use a stethoscope or the variety of tests (such as bloodwork, electrocardiograms and blood pressure readings) that other kinds of physicians routinely use as sources of information in making their diagnoses” (Berkenkotter 2008: 2). Although primarily content-related in its original milieu, the model may be applied to the study of the discourse of clinical-diagnostic case reporting. Since the model features guidelines which help to discursively construct a complete case not only from the biomedical (Wade and Halligan 2004) but also from the patient-centred (Balint et al. 1970) perspectives, it may provide useful categories of information to be included in clinical-diagnostic case reports. It may also aid the identification or choice of the corresponding linguistic resources to express the information required and help to differentiate between these two perspectives. Data for the present analysis will constitute a collection of medical case reports derived from professional medical journals. It will be demonstrated that the texts written from the clinical-diagnostic perspective can be understood better and potentially constructed more effectively with reference to particular conceptualisations of various social and mental phenomena as routinely utilised in psychology and psychiatry.

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Individual
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Institutional
£75.00 / $100.00
Publication
01/02/2023
Pages
224
Size
234 x 156mm
Readership
scholars and students
Illustration
40 figures

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