Systemic Functional Linguistics in the Digital Age - Sheena Gardner
7. The Construal of Terminal Illness in Online Medical Texts: Social Distance and Semantic Space
Systemic Functional Linguistics in the Digital Age - Sheena Gardner
Meriel Bloor [+]
University of Warwick
Meriel Bloor is an Honorary Fellow of the Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick, Warwick, UK. Her publications centre on Systemic Functional Linguistics and critical discourse analysis with applications to specialist registers and English for Specific Purposes. She is currently researching the discourse of medical communication.
Description
This paper is concerned with the lexicogrammar of death and life, focusing in particular on the language used in online medical information on the prognosis of diseases. In it, I discuss some work on the language of living and dying and raise questions about how social context influences the construal of sensitive human experiences.