Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at University College London, interested in language, illness and healthcare.

Research:

I work at the intersections of language, mind and health(care), exploring mental/physical illness. Examining the language of patients, carers, healthcare professionals, journalists, poets, writers, etc. I focus on how they say what they say to understand what it means to be unwell. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My approach is data-driven and broadly discourse analytic, focusing on any aspect of language that becomes relevant in a given context. I've worked specifically with metaphor, personal pronouns, negation, narratives, impoliteness, and humour, investigating, among others, how:

• the ideologies of the UK hospice movement influence what health professionals consider a ‘good death’;

• specific linguistic aspects of so-called auditory verbal hallucinations contribute to the distress of people who hear voices that others cannot hear;

• humour helps people cope with cancer, build communities and regain a sense of empowerment;

• the experience of depression is often characterized by physical pain and a split-self, along with emptiness and lethargy 

I often use corpus methods (alongside qualitative tools), which allow me to examine large quantities of language data quickly and systematically and to support qualitative findings quantitatively. Whenever possible, I focus on the potential practical applications of any findings for the diagnosis and treatment of specific conditions and for the quality/effectiveness of healthcare services and communication. 

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I was most recently Co-investigator in the £1m ESRC-funded project 'Questioning Vaccination Discourse: A corpus-based study (Quo VaDis)'. In an interdisciplinary team we explored people's views and concerns around vaccinations by looking at how people actually talk or write about vaccination in different contexts. We wanted to better understand the range of pro-vaccination, anti-vaccination, and undecided views through language because how such controversial topics are talked about reflect and shape beliefs and attitudes, and potentially behaviour. 

 

The project used the latest techniques for large-scale computer-aided linguistic analysis to investigate discussions about vaccinations in English:

1.    on social media (Mumsnet, reddit, Twitter)

2.    in UK national press reports

3.    in UK Parliamentary debates 

 

Our findings can be found on the project website: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/vaccination-discourse/

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PhD Supervision: 

I am interested in supervising students in the following areas:​

• Applied linguistic approaches to experiences of illness, health and wellbeing, especially cancer, mental illness, COPD, and vaccination

• Linguistic approaches to non/fictional illness narratives

• Interactions in healthcare contexts (online or offline)

• Metaphor in discourses of health (and other professional contexts)

 

Details on how to apply can be found here.