Corpus linguistics and health communication: using corpora to examine the representation of health and illness

This chapter explores the ways in which corpora and corpus linguistics methods can be used to examine language used in illness and health (care) contexts. The chapter describes and evaluates existing research in this now very broad area before providing a practical demonstration of the advantages (but also challenges) of using corpus linguistics in the study of health communication through two original case studies. The first investigates the representation of HIV and AIDS in a corpus of advice-seeking emails submitted to an adolescent health website using keyword analysis as its starting point. The second case study explores the metaphorical representation of dementia in a corpus of newspaper articles about the condition published by the British tabloid newspaper, the Daily Mail, drawing on the corpus linguistic technique of collocation analysis as its primary method. In light of these case studies, the chapter discusses the strengths and drawbacks of corpus methods for health communication research and gestures to areas for future development in this exciting and interdisciplinary field.