What do you get if you analyse tens of millions of words written about healthcare?
If you’re at all interested in how language works in healthcare, you’d be nuts to miss the upcoming webinar from SLC and EALTHY.
Elena Semino and the team at Lancaster University are world-renowned for their work in this fascinating field. Their latest book, ‘Applying Corpus Linguistics to Illness and Healthcare’, analyses large tracts of language – literally tens of millions of words – used in healthcare interactions and communication, media articles, news reports, social media posts, online forums, patient feedback, and lived experience accounts, and surfaces what can be gleaned and learnt from it.
Source: https://bsky.app/profile/lukeccollins.bsky.social
How do people discuss pain? Make jokes about cancer? Feel about vaccinations? Express anxiety? Do men and women talk about healthcare differently? Why are some conditions stigmatised and not others? How does this change over time? How do we understand the experience of patients and those who care for them? Why do we choose the words we do? And what does this say about us?
All this and much more can be elucidated from applying corpus linguistics – the systematic study and analysis of vast amounts of language data – to how language works in healthcare.
We’re delighted and privileged to have Elena Semino give a webinar on her work as part of the SLC and EALTHY professional development series for teachers of English for healthcare. Elena will be discussing the research she and her team did, the findings, the challenges and breakthroughs, and the lessons that can be taken from it. For teachers, there’ll be opportunities to explore how her work can influence and shape how we teach language to healthcare students and professionals.
Sign up now and get ready to listen to, learn from, and discuss with one of the world’s pre-eminent researchers and writers in the language of healthcare. And it’s free!
Register for the webinar
About Elena Semino
Elena Semino is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University, and Director of the ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science. She is a fellow of the UK’s Academy of Social Sciences and has held visiting professorships at universities in China and Italy.
About EALTHY
EALTHY is the global association for the teaching of English for Healthcare, providing professional development, training and services to teachers, researchers, and educational institutions around the world.
As part of this, the association organises webinars, materials, teaching resources and networking opportunities for members, as well as the bi-annual English for Healthcare Conference taking place in Kraków in September this year.
Click here for full details and registration.
About SLC
SLC provides online medical English and healthcare-specific exam preparation resources and training to healthcare educators, employers, and professionals around the world.
SLC’s digital content containing over 850+ hours of material is used by medical schools, nursing colleges, universities, language schools, healthcare employers and individuals in over 75 countries. SLC’s tuition services prepare Doctors and Nurses for OET Medicine, OET Nursing, and IELTS, and improve the clinical communication skills of thousands of learners.