Language, Discourse and Anxiety

"Why is language so important to the ways that we make sense of anxiety? This book uses corpus-assisted discourse analysis to examine 23 million words of text posted to a forum for people with anxiety. It shows how linguistic techniques such as catastrophisation and anthropomorphisation can result in very different conceptualisations of anxiety, as well as how aspects of identity such as age, sex and cultural background can impact on understandings of anxiety and how it ought to be managed. It tracks the changing identities of posters, from their first posts to their last, and incorporates a range of corpus-based techniques to examine the language data, enabling consideration of interaction between participants and features associated with online forms of communication such as emoji. It ultimately provides a step towards a better understanding of different responses to anxiety and aims to promote further engagement with this topic in the field of Applied Linguistics"--

List of contents

Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Sketching anxiety; 3. The lived experience; 4. Creating a community; 5. Sex and gender; 6. Comparing cultures; 7. Time; 8. Conclusion.

About the author

Luke Collins is a Senior Research Associate with the ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science at Lancaster University, specialising in the study of health and digital communication using corpus linguistics.Paul Baker is Professor of English Language at Lancaster University. He has written twenty-two books on various aspects of language, discourse and corpus linguistics. He is commissioning editor of the journal Corpora and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Summary

Why is language so important to the ways that we make sense of anxiety? This book uses corpus assisted discourse analysis to examine 23 million words of text posted to a forum for people with anxiety, showing the impact of aspects of identity like age, sex and cultural background.

Product details

• Authors: Paul Baker, Luke Collins, Luke (Lancaster University) Baker Collins, Collins Luke
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.07.2023
• EAN: 9781009250122
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0925012-2
• No. of pages: 264
• Series: Cambridge Applied Linguistics
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics; SELF-HELP / Anxieties & Phobias, PSYCHOLOGY / General, Psychology, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Semantics, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Study & Teaching, Coping with anxiety & phobias, Language teaching theory & methods, Semantics, discourse analysis, stylistics, Semantics, discourse analysis, etc, Coping with / advice about anxiety and phobias