How patients talk: Metaphors, Cancer and the End of Life, seminar with Prof. Elena Semino, Univerity of Lancaster, UK.
Dr Elena Semino, a full professor of Linguistics at Lancaster University (United Kingdom), is an internationally renowned teacher and researcher and an expert when it comes to analysing the language used by patients and health professionals to talk about complex, emotional, subjective and taboo experiences.
Through the computer-assisted analysis of a 1.5-million-word corpus taken from interviews and online patient fora, Professor Semino has published numerous works on language trends and metaphors for cancer and the end of life. An example are all the words related to “warfare” (battle against cancer, struggle, war, win, lose…).
The results of these innovative analyses could help better understand the experiences, attitudes and needs of our patients and the people around them. They can also help us avoid distress or misunderstandings and find suitable metaphors for each situation.
The seminar will take place in the Events Hall at Hospital Universitari General de Catalunya on 21 February, from 6 to 7 p.m.