Chrissie Giles investigates how medical professionals deliver diagnoses of terminal illness:
Individual words matter. Professor Elena Semino and colleagues at Lancaster University have been conducting a study of how certain kinds of language are used in communication about the end of life. They’ve created a set of over 1.5 million words, collected from interviews and online forums, where patients, carers or healthcare professionals meet to talk with their peers.
Violence or war metaphors (“battling my disease”, “keep up the fight!”) can be disempowering or disheartening for people with cancer, potentially demanding constant effort or implying that a turn for the worse is a personal failure. But in other contexts, they can empower people, helping someone express determination or solidarity, or bringing a sense of meaning, pride and identity. “You don’t need to be a linguist to realise what metaphors a patient’s using,” says Semino. Doctors should ask: are those metaphors working for the patient at that point? Are they helpful, giving them a sense of meaning, identity, purpose? Or are they increasing anxiety?
The Dish 