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1st Feb – Professorial lecture by Carol Rivas (IOE)
By Zsofia Demjen, on 10 January 2023
Hello and a Happy New Year to everyone!
The professorial lecture by Carol Rivas (IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society) on 1st Feburary may be of interest to many in this network:
Where external representations meet embodied experiences: a story of diverse methods and diverse voices in health and social care and education
In this lecture, Carol Rivas will explore how people who are marginalised because of identities as ethnically/racially different, abused, sick or disabled, navigate the worlds of health and community care and education. She will consider the communication work they do to express embodied experiences as societally accepted external representations and the structures that exclude them . She will also explore how professional staff should respond, when faced with this, to ensure they give the best care. Drawing on her different studies, methodologies and theoretical models, she will describe both problems and practical approaches that include diverse voices within research and practice. Future experiences can be improved for both practitioners and those they seek to support if the experiential knowledge that is so often subjugated becomes more visible through such approaches, less marginalised (more centred) and thence more accepted.
Please see further details in our Eventbrite page.
Save the dates
By Zsofia Demjen, on 21 December 2022
In the spring term our seminars will take place on Wednesdays 1-2pm on the following dates: 25th Jan, 22nd Feb, and 22nd Mar.
We already have exciting talks lined up, including on the topics of vaccination discussions online and multimodal aspects of healthcare communication (titles and abstracts coming in the new year), but please do get in touch (z.demjen@ucl.ac.uk) if you would be up for sharing your work with the Network at one of our sessions. And as always feel free to send this message on to your colleagues and students at UCL who work on relevant topics.
Final seminar of 2022
By Zsofia Demjen, on 2 December 2022
We would like to invite you to the final event of 2022 in the UCL Health Communication Network’s seminar series.
- Date: 15th December 2022, 1-2pm GMT
- Location: UPDATE: Due to the railway strikes and weather conditions, this Thursday’s Health Communication Network seminar will now be held virtually, via zoom only. See link below.
On this occasion we will host two presenters from PALS for a presentation of 30-40mins with time for discussion afterwards.
Communication difficulties in interaction: The application of Conversation Analysis
Suzanne Beeke and Steven Bloch, Dept of Language and Cognition
A significant number of people in the health care system have communication difficulties and needs. These can arise as a result of developmental or acquired disorders such as stroke, Parkinson’s or dementia. The evidence base has been informed largely by a focus on impairments of speech, language and cognition rather than communication in context such as health care interactions or conversations between family members. In this presentation we will introduce applied Conversation Analysis (CA) and how we use it to understand the impact of communication difficulties on peer interactions and to develop healthcare interventions to facilitate ‘Better Conversations’. We will present video examples from aphasia (a communication difficulty commonly caused by stroke) and dysarthria (a speech disorder caused by motor neurone disease). tinyurl.com/BetterConversationslab
Live stream link for those who can’t attend: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/98164550979?pwd=T0JoNTV0Y3MvUjRTa1YrTkljd3Qwdz09 (Passcode: 053572)
As ever, please get in touch (z.demjen@ucl.ac.uk) if you would like to share your work with the Network at one of our sessions. And feel free to send this message on to your colleagues and students at UCL who work on relevant topics.
Second seminar – 17th November 2022
By Zsofia Demjen, on 3 November 2022
We would like to invite you to the next event in the UCL Health Communication Network’s seminar series.
Date: 17th November 2022, 1-2pm GMT
Location: IOE – 20 Bedford Way, Room W4.01
Talks:
‘Language in adults with Down syndrome: Evidence from narrative production and sentence comprehension’ – Elisa Mattiauda, Psychology and Language Sciences
Individuals with Down syndrome present with a specific profile of relative strengths and weaknesses in areas of cognitive and communication abilities, while also experiencing accelerated ageing and a range of health complications. Language development is particularly affected by the syndrome, resulting in patterns of generalised delays in acquisition, coupled with more marked difficulties in aspects of syntax across production and comprehension. Much of the available evidence of the linguistic profile of Down syndrome comes from child and adolescent populations, making adults an understudied group. Given mounting evidence of the link between Down syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease, our research seeks to add to our understanding of adult language attainment in this population and its possible links with dementia presentation. In this talk, I will present some recently published findings from my doctoral research relative to macrostructural narrative production abilities in a sample of young adults with Down syndrome. I will also discuss work in progress on narrative microstructure and passives comprehension, and consider possible implications for monitoring and diagnosis.
‘Metaphor, Agency, and the Language of Addiction’ – Sinéad Jackson, Culture, Communication and Media
Alcohol addiction is a public health crisis, and it is a situation which has significantly worsened as a result of the pandemic. Individuals affected by alcohol harm often report feeling shame, feelings of disempowerment, and a lack of agency and control as a result of their situation. These factors are often barriers to seeking and potentially engaging with any support that may be available. Yet despite the proven difficulties in communication around this topic – both interpersonally and in clinical settings – there is yet to be much large-scale linguistic analysis of addiction discourse. In response to this, this talk will present a planned study examining how both institutional bodies and those with lived experience of alcohol harm use language to frame the experience. The study will focus on metaphorical language specifically, as metaphor has been shown to offer rich insights into how we frame and respond to difficult or distressing experiences. Using computer-aided methods, the study will conduct a systematic analysis of a large electronic dataset. The analysis will foreground evidence of agency and empowerment, considering the role and function of agency in the metaphors identified. The findings hope to enable an increased understanding of the experience of alcohol harm, and offer evidence-based insights into potential problems with current communication in clinical settings.
Live stream link for those who can’t attend: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/98164550979?pwd=T0JoNTV0Y3MvUjRTa1YrTkljd3Qwdz09 (Passcode: 053572)
Please get in touch (z.demjen@ucl.ac.uk) if you would be up for sharing your work with the Network at one of our sessions. And feel free to send this message on to your colleagues and students at UCL who work on relevant topics. We’d like to host two speakers per seminar, and would be interested in analysis, ideas, approaches, etc. at all stages of development.
First Research Seminar – 13th October 2022
By Zsofia Demjen, on 5 October 2022
The Network’s first event as a space where UCL researchers (students and staff) can connect and find out about each other’s work across faculties will take place on 13th October 2022, 1-2pm
The Network will host two talks followed by time for discussions and getting to know each other. The details are as follows:
Date and time: 13th October 2022, 1-2pm
Location: IOE – 20 Bedford Way, Room W4.01
Talks:
‘A corpus-based approach to identifying linguistic markers of suicidal ideation in Reddit data’ – Andrea Vaughan, Culture, Communication, and Media
In suicidology, a popular research topic is identifying linguistic markers of suicidal ideation in social media text. As research suggests not all people seek professional help for suicidal thoughts or intentions, the objective is typically to use these markers to identify people who could benefit from medical intervention. However, this research often compares data from people writing about suicide with data from others who are not discussing suicide, so it is possible that the currently understood linguistic markers are only indicative of the topic and not of mental health state. To explore this issue, posts on reddit’s r/suicidewatch were compared with the same users’ posts on unthematic subreddits (e.g., r/gardening). This presentation will discuss results from this pilot study and the possible implications for much of the existing research in this field.
The role of linguists in medical lexis reform: lessons from the past and directions for the future – Beth Malory, English Language and Literature
Where medical lexis causes demonstrable harm for patients, how should reforms be implemented? In considering this question, this talk will take as a case study the lexis used in relation to pregnancy loss in English. Here, such reform attempts have, since the 1980s, consisted of informal interventions in medical journals, and latterly more formal ‘consensus statements’ by panels of experts. Despite these attempted interventions, however, no empirical attitudinal data on the lexis used to describe experiences of pregnancy loss have been gathered in decades, and significant dissatisfaction is still reported on social media and in the popular press. Situations such as these raise fundamental questions as to the role of modern linguists. This is, after all, an era when many linguists are involved in producing guidelines for inclusive language use, to safeguard marginalised groups from harm. Against this backdrop, can we cling to the notion of a purely descriptive linguistic discipline, and should we want to? Or do we, as linguists, have a role to play in using our tools and expertise to implement language reforms that are evidence-based, proportionate, and supportive of health and wellbeing?
Live stream link for those who can’t attend: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/98164550979?pwd=T0JoNTV0Y3MvUjRTa1YrTkljd3Qwdz09 (passcode 053572)
Please get in touch (z.demjen@ucl.ac.uk) if you would like to share your work with the Network at one of our sessions. We’d like to host two speakers per seminar, and would be interested in analysis, ideas, approaches, etc. at all stages of development.
Call for Papers
By Zsofia Demjen, on 20 September 2022
Call for Papers:
Starting this October, we (Andrea Vaughan, Sinead Jackson and Zsofia Demjen) are re-launching the UCL Health Communication Network as a space where UCL researchers (students and staff) can connect and find out about each other’s work across faculties.
To this end, we are organising a programme of monthly lunchtime seminars where people present current/ongoing/just finished/just starting work in 15-20min informal presentations followed by discussion and chat. The seminars will be in-person, but also live-streamed for those who can’t be there, and take place on a Thursday 1-2pm. The first three dates are 13th October, 17th November, and 15th December, with more dates coming from January onwards.
We are delighted that we already have presenters for 13th October and 15th December. The range of topics include: language and suicidal ideation, metaphor use in alcohol use disorder, language guidelines for adverse gestational events, conversation analysis and communication disorders – details coming soon!
Please get in touch with Zsofia Demjen if you would be up for sharing your work with the group at one of our sessions. We’d like to host two speakers per seminar, and would be interested in analysis, ideas, approaches, etc. at all stages of development.
We are looking forward to getting to know the breadth of health communications research across UCL!
New ESRC-funded project on vaccination discourse
By Zsofia Demjen, on 30 September 2020
A new health communications project will be starting in March 2021: Questioning Vaccination Discourse (Quo VaDis): a corpus-based study.
Virtual Event: Communication in Health Care and the impact of COVID-19
By Zsofia Demjen, on 17 September 2020
To formally launch the International Consortium for Communication in Healthcare, members of the group (including UCL) will be running a live webinar on Wednesday 23rd September, 8am BST, where you can hear from the panellists about healthcare communication in the age of COVID-19. Read the rest of this entry »
Applying Linguistics in Illness and Healthcare Contexts
By Zsofia Demjen, on 20 April 2020
As we are not able to share any UCL events at the moment, I thought I’d take the opportunity to share a new book.
A new edited collection called Applying Linguistics in Illness and Healthcare Contexts, has just been published. There was a small virtual launch on twitter with a chapter-by-chapter summary, and this flyer also includes and overview. If you’re interested, the introduction is open access here.
Please share other publications and health communication related news via UCLHEALTHCOMM@JISCMAIL.AC.UK. Shared items will appear here.
UCL is joining the International Consortium for Communication in Healthcare
By Zsofia Demjen, on 6 March 2020
UCL, represented by the UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics, is becoming one of only two UK institutions to join the International Consortium for Communication in Health Care (IC4CH), currently based at the Australian National University.
IC4CH promotes interdisciplinary health communication research and the application of research findings to healthcare practice and education internationally. More in this short video:
If you’re interested in playing an active part in the UCL side of things, get in touch with Zsófia Demjén.