Tag Archives: corpus linguistics

Annual ‘Corpus Linguistics in Scotland’ network meeting, 30th November 2018, Edinburgh

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Call for Papers

On 30th November 2018 (Friday), the School of Health in Social Science will host the annual meeting of the Corpus Linguistics in Scotland network.

We are delighted to announce that the theme of the meeting will be “Corpus Linguistics in the Arts and Humanities”. The meeting is an opportunity for networking and bringing together researchers using corpus linguistics methods in the Arts and Humanities (e.g., anthropology, film, geography, history, law, literature, music, and also health/medical humanities).

The event will allow researchers to present their work (either completed or in progress) and to discuss their challenges of using corpus analytic methods and tools to data in the Arts and Humanities. MA and PhD students are particularly encouraged to submit their abstracts. Arts and Humanities scholars who do not know about corpus methods but would like to find out more about it are also welcome to attend the event.

Venue

The meeting will be held at the University of Edinburgh, School of Health in Social Science, Teviot Place, Doorway 6, Edinburgh EH8 9AG, Room 4.1 (4th floor). For a campus map, please follow this link https://www.ed.ac.uk/maps/maps

Procedure for Submission

We invite submission of abstracts of papers on any topic relevant to the application of Corpus Linguistics in the Arts and Humanities. Abstracts can be for short work-in-progress papers (10 minutes) and full paper presentations (20 minutes). Abstracts should include a title, name and academic affiliation. Please send an abstract (approx. 150 words) to the organiser Dr. Laura Cariola (laura.cariola@ed.ac.uk).

Conference Registration

To submit your abstract and to register for the meeting, please send an email to the organiser Dr. Laura Cariola (laura.cariola@ed.ac.uk) with the following information:

  • Name
  • Email
  • Affiliation
  • Area of interest
  • Expression of interest to be included in the CLiS membership database

There is no charge for the attendance, and tea/coffee and biscuits will be provided for breaks. Lunch can be purchased in the vicinity and nearby shops.

Key Dates

Closing date for abstract: 31st October 2018

Confirmation of abstract acceptance: 9th November 2018

Closing date for registration: 23rd November 2018

CLiS meeting: 30th November 2018

We look forward to welcoming you to Edinburgh and will keep you updated on the latest news via the CLiS Twitter account https://twitter.com/corpusnscotland and the following hashtag #CLIS_2018.

2018 CLiS meeting organizer: Dr. Laura Cariola (University of Edinburgh)

CLIS conveners: Dr. Vander Viana (University of Stirling) and Dr. Brona Murphy (University of Edinburgh)

CALL FOR PAPERS: Metaphor across cultures and social spheres. Conference in Castelló de la Plana, 8-9 November 2018

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CALL FOR PAPERS: Metaphor across cultures and social spheres. Conference in Castelló de la Plana – 8-9 November 2018

The V International Conference on Metaphor and Discourse will focus especially on the use of metaphor in a variety of modal manifestations across different cultures and social spheres. However, all aspects of metaphor in discourse are object of study and debate in the Conference. Following previous editions, the V International Conference on Metaphor and Discourse will be held at Universitat Jaume I (UJI), Castelló de la Plana (8-9 November 2018).

Contributions are encouraged on all aspects of metaphor and discourse studies, departing from the basic tenets of conceptual metaphor theory already set by landmark publications like Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) up to the more recently emergent trends that deal with the study of metaphor across different types of discourse, modes of expression and thought.

Our aim is to bring together specialists and researchers involved in these research matters in order to discuss recent contributions to the field, as well as to open new debates about the relevance of metaphor in discourse with special emphasis on the following topics:

• Quantitative and qualitative methods for metaphor analysis in discourse

• Metaphor and cultural diversity

• Discursive, cognitive and communicative functions of metaphor

• Corpora and technology in metaphor analysis

• Multimodal and monomodal metaphor

• Metaphor in virtual domains

• New cognitive domains in science and technology

• Social relevance of metaphor (in Education, Ideology, etc.)

The following keynote speakers have so far accepted the invitation to participate in the conference:

– Dr. Alice Deignan, University of Leeds

– Dr. Charles Forceville, University of Amsterdam

– Dr. Marianna Bolognesi, Oxford University

Contributions, either in English or Spanish, may be submitted as either oral presentations or posters. Oral presentations will be 20 minutes in length plus a 10-minute discussion. As for poster sessions, a suitable time will be reserved so that poster presentations receive due attention on the part of all the assistants. Abstract submission may be realized through an email to: metaphor@fue.uji.es. Only abstracts between 600-700 words (including 3- 5 references and 3-5 keywords) will be accepted. The abstract must explicitly mention the aims or motivation, theoretical framework, method, (expected) results and conclusions of the contribution.

All submissions will undergo a double-blind peer-review process. Please, do not include the author’s name, email and affiliation in the abstract files.

Important Dates

– 20 July,  2018: Deadline for abstract submission (oral presentation and /or poster)

– 6  August 2018: Notification of acceptance/rejection

– 30 September 2018: Deadline for early bird registration and payment

– 8-9 November 2018: V International Conference on Metaphor and Discourse

– 14 January 2019: Deadline for full manuscript submission

Organizers

GReSCA. Grup de Recerca en Semántica Contrastiva i Aplicada. Universitat Jaume I 

Departament d’Estudis Anglesos. Facultat de Ciències Humanes i Socials UJI

New book series “Language, Discourse and Mental Health” (University of Exeter Press)

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New Book Series “Language, Discourse and Mental Health”

Editors: Dr. Laura A. Cariola (Lead Editor) (University of Edinburgh), Dr. Stefan Ecks (University of Edinburgh), Dr. Billy Lee (University of Edinburgh) and Dr. Lisa Mikesell (Rutgers University).

The editors are very pleased to announce the new book series “Language, Discourse and Mental Health” published with the University of Exeter Press. This book series is a unique resource to further knowledge and understanding of mental health from a pluralistically informed linguistic perspective.

Using qualitative and quantitative approaches to language-based analysis, the empirical and theoretical contributions will provide a compelling insight on mental health from a range of perspectives and contexts, including psychotherapeutic communication, public presentations of mental health, literary accounts of lived experiences, and language features associated to specific mental health problems. This interdisciplinary book series will be an essential reference for students, researchers and practitioners in linguistics and communication, education, cognitive science, psychology, counselling and psychotherapy, special needs, medicine, nursing, and medical anthropology.

Scope of the Book Series

The book series is framed in terms of linguistic perspectives that differentiate between communication about mental health (i.e., language performance or use), and the communication of individuals with mental health problems (i.e., language competence or systems) in real-world and research contexts. Such a focus is anticipated to be captured through the following linguistic perspectives: sociolinguistics and sociocultural linguistics, cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics, literary linguistics and stylistics. These can be applied through a range of language-based methodologies, including qualitative methods (e.g., discourse analysis, conversation analysis, interpretative phenomenological analysis, narrative analysis, thematic analysis), quantitative methods (e.g., corpus-based approaches, quantitative content analysis), and also experimental methods.

Consistent with an interdisciplinary framework that seeks to encourage and strengthen interdisciplinary research of mental health, the book series aims to encompass a wide repertoire different theoretical and philosophical views and a broad range of themes that add significant value to the field of mental health research, including:

  • ‘Understanding of mental health and mental health problems’ by developing empirical and theoretical knowledge of mental health from different perspectives. 
  • ‘Living with mental health problems’ by improving understanding of individuals’ perceptions of living with mental health problems.
  • ‘Effective interventions’ by focussing on the effectiveness of psychological intervention in the treatment and prevention of mental health problems.
  • ‘Wider inequalities in society’ (e.g., issues around gender, ethnicity, poverty sexuality and faith)
  • ‘Vulnerable and hard-to-reach populations’ in society, including drug users, migrants and homeless people.

Call for Book Proposals

The book series “Language, Discourse and Mental Health” is accepting book proposals for monographs and edited volumes. To discuss your book proposals, please contact the book series editors. Book series launch spring 2019.

Book proposal form: UEP – CE Book Proposal Form 2018 (see also http://www.exeterpress.co.uk/for-authors)

Dr. Laura A. Cariola (Lead Editor). Laura.Cariola@ed.ac.uk

Dr. Stefan Ecks. Stefan.Ecks@ed.ac.uk

Dr. Billy Lee. Billy.Lee@ed.ac.uk

Dr. Lisa Mikesell Mikesell.Lisa@gmail.com

Presentations of Borderline Personality Disorder in the UK Press by Laura A. Cariola

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Presentations of Borderline Personality Disorder in the UK Press

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is the most stigmatised and misunderstood, yet also one of the most common diagnosed personality disorders. Within the UK there is an estimated prevalence between 0.7% to 2% of BPD in the general population, with women, 0.6% twice as often diagnosed compared to men (0.3%) (NHS, 2011 factsheet), and in the U.S. between 0.5 % and 1.4 % (ten Have, Verheul, Kaasenbrood, van Dorseelaer, Tuithof, Kleinjan & de Graaf, 2016), and women are particularly over-represented in the forensic population with 20% of women fulfilling criteria for a BPD diagnosis (Singleton, Meltzer & Gatward, 1998; Sansone & Sansone, 2009). Despite the relatively common diagnosis of BPD in both inpatients and outpatients, the presentation of personality disorders in newspapers has received only very limited attention (Bowen, 2016; Goulden et al., 2011).

For my postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (University of Edinburgh), I am using in-depth corpus-assisted discourse analysis to explore how BPD is presented in UK newspapers. Special attention is given to identify how discourse types compare in their communication of stereotypes and prejudices that create and reinforce existing social stigma against individuals affected by BPD. To this end I have conducted a corpus-assisted qualitative frame analysis and a comparison of gender presentations. The slides of these analyses might be of interest to anyone with an interest in public presentations of mental health:

Framing of Borderline Personality Disorder in the UK Press. 

Presentations of Complex Mental Illness in the UK Press: A Corpus-Assisted Discourse Study.

Dr Sylvia Jaworska

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Affiliation: University of Reading

Dr Sylvia Jaworska is an Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics at the Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics at the University of Reading. She is interested in contemporary discourses around health and illness, also in context of food communication and parenting, and explores those areas using linguistic methodologies including corpus linguistics, discourse and narrative analysis. She has published work on discourses of perinatal health and postnatal depression across medical, media and lay contexts as well as pain narratives (please see her publications here). Currently, Sylvia is involved in an interdisciplinary project on the multimodality, perception and understanding of health claims on food packing.

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Digital Scholarship talk on Complex Mental Illness in the UK Press — November 22, 2017

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Presented by Laura Cariola 

Abstract: This seminar reports on an in-depth corpus-assisted discourse analysis which explores how complex mental illnesses are presented in UK newspaper articles and medical case studies.

Special attention is given to identifying how discourse types compare in their communication of stereotypes and prejudices that create and reinforce existing social stigma against individuals affected by mental illness. I will outline an analysis of discursive constructions of borderline personality disorder in the UK Press that was based on 2,139 articles (with total count of 1,868,320 words) from the first mentioning of the term “borderline personality disorder” in 1990, until 2016. The results indicated that discourses were highly gendered with significantly more references to women than men, which is consistent with women being associated with borderline personality disorder (Becker, 1997). Women’s identities were often described through familial relationships, and women’s ownership status was restrained to simplistic existential themes.

Although early parental losses and trauma were reported in both women and men, there were also stereotypical gender-based differences associated to borderline personality disorder-diagnosed women, including reports of suicide and matricide as well as unresolved parental dependencies and conflicts. This alludes to parental conflicts as the cause of developing borderline personality disorder (Whalen et al., 2014). In relation to the home environment, women were also presented as passive victims of others’ coercive or destructive behaviour. In summary, the results of this semantic analysis showed that newspaper articles present stereotypical gender-based differences of borderline personality disorder, which reinforce public’s negative ideologies towards mental illness and women, and may also interfere with clinical perceptions.

“Presentations of borderline personality disorder in the UK press” by Laura A. Cariola

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This study “Presentations of borderline personality disorder in the UK press: A corpus-assisted discourse analysis” has been presented on the 5th May 2017 as an invited speaker talk at the “Cross Disciplinary Perspectives on ‘anti-social personality disorder’: Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) in Context” seminar series in London (Funded by the ESRC).

Abstract

People with borderline personality disorder are exposed to stigma and discrimination towards mental illness, which impacts on their quality of life and recovery. Through the use of corpus-assisted discourse analysis, this presentation explores the discursive constructions of borderline personality disorder in the UK Press. The corpus included 2,139 articles (with total count of 1,868,320 words) from the first mentioning of the term “borderline personality disorder” in 1990, until 2016.

An initial analysis of frequent key words indicated that discourses were highly gendered with significantly more references to women than men – “her” (23,820), “she” (22,539) vs. “he” (11,382), “his” (9,691), which is consistent with women being associated with borderline personality disorder (Becker, 1997). Women’s identities were often described through familial relationship – “her mother” (871), “her daughter” (591), “her family” (567), “her son” (470) and “her father” (405) – and women’s ownership status was restrained to simplistic existential themes – “her life” (1,179), “her death” (860), “her problems” (124). Suicide was more frequently reported in relation to women – “took (119), take (94), end (32), taken (40) her life” or “jumped (56) to her death”, compared to men. Women are also more often reported of having killed their own mother – e.g., “killed (46), stabbing (39), killing (23) her mother”, whereas in men, mothers were implicitly or explicitly blamed – e.g., “his mother was jailed”, “his mother was an alcoholic”, “his mother was largely to blame”, which alludes to parental conflicts as the cause of developing borderline personality disorder (Whalen et al., 2014). Although early parental losses and trauma were reported in both women and men, women were found to have continuous parental dependencies and conflicts – “her parents did take her back into their home”, “was thrown out of her home by her own parents”. In relation to the immediate home environment, women were also passive victims of others’ coercive or destructive behaviour – e.g., “she was taken from her home”, ”she was raped on her way home”.

In summary, the results of this initial semantic analysis showed that newspaper articles present stereotypical gender-based differences of borderline personality disorder, which reinforce public’s negative ideologies towards mental illness and may also interfere with clinical perceptions.

 

Research Fellowship in the Humanities

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The Institute for Advances Studies in the Humanities has offered Laura Cariola (that’s me) a postdoctoral research fellowship to explore “Presentations of Complex Mental Illness in Media and Medical Discourses using Corpus-Based Approaches to Discourse Analysis”. This project forms part of ongoing work that investigates mental health in public and medical discourses. Collaborators include academics across the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, such as clinical psychology, counselling and psychotherapy, anthropology, social work and medicine. The fellowship will also provide ample opportunities for knowledge exchange events and activities, research colloquia and a ‘Health Humanities’ invited speakers series.

The IASH was established in 1969 to promote interdisciplinary research in the arts, humanities and social sciences at the University of Edinburgh. It support innovative research and public engagement activities across the arts, humanities and social sciences through a range of interdisciplinary and international projects and programmes. The IASH provides an international, interdisciplinary and autonomous space for discussion and debate. Since its foundation more than 1000 scholars from 66 countries have held Institute fellowships; and up to 28 Fellows are in residence at any one time.

Presentations of Complex Mental Illness in Media and Medical Discourses: A Protocol for a Corpus-Assisted Study http://www.language-and-psychoanalysis.com/article/view/1889

 

Workshops on “Corpus Linguistics and Content Analysis”

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In May and June 2017, the School of Health and Social Science at the University of Edinburgh offers a series of workshops on the use of corpus linguistics and content analysis to explore language data. Such quantitative approaches to language analysis are carried out using software and can provide in-depth insight on language use and word patterns that would be too difficult and too time-consuming to identify using qualitative methods.

Dr Laura A. Cariola

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Laura Cariola

Affiliation: University of Edinburgh

My research focuses on the intersection between language and clinical psychology, including both qualitative and quantitative research approaches a) to inform the development of policy guidelines and interventions to improve provision of healthcare, and b) to explore media presentations of mental health.

As a part of ongoing work that explores mental health in public and medical discourses, I have obtained a Research Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities where I am focussing upon ‘Presentations of complex mental illness in media and medical discourses: A corpus‐assisted study’. Collaborators include academics across the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, such as clinical psychology, counselling and psychotherapy, anthropology, social work and medicine. My mentor is Prof. Matthias Schwannauer, Head of Clinical and Health Psychology at the School of Health in Social Science at the University of Edinburgh.

I am also the co-founding editor (together with Dr. Andrew Wilson) of the journal ‘Language and Psychoanalysis’. The ‘Language and Mind Network’ which aims to bring together individuals with an interest in the intersection of language and psychology, including psychotherapy, clinical psychology and the humanities, and thus to encourage dialogue and collaboration.

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