Healthcare labels. A linguist’s contribution
My Twitter timeline has again sported a discussion on whether patients are patients, or perhaps service users or something yet different. I must admit that I find such discussions quite moot. But I would like to suggest a bit of linguistic realism, so that the discussions might become a bit more useful. Continue reading “Healthcare labels. A linguist’s contribution”
Can you be useful, doctor?
Twitter has recently been delighted with another must-read paper, this time on five questions that every patient has but never asks. For me, well, let me put it gently, I quite dislike the article. Continue reading “Can you be useful, doctor?”
On ‘discourses of…’
I have just come back from a couple of conferences with a focus on qualitative research. This time, however, I was particularly struck by the frequent use of the phrase ‘discourse of’. In this post, I want to comment on it. As ever, I want to stress that these are only my impressions and they do not pretend to be the truth. Continue reading “On ‘discourses of…’”
Ideology matters
Lancet Psychiatry has just published a polemic and a response which focused on language. I want to comment on them, because the polemic (with which I tend to agree) and the response miss the point somewhat, although in different ways. Continue reading “Ideology matters”