Abstract
Cognitive approaches to discourse analysis examine the relationships between language, conceptual structure and the social contexts of language use. In this chapter, we use conceptual blending theory (BT) to investigate public knowledge and conceptualisations of the ways in which communicable diseases can be spread. The data come from three focus groups held in the UK with members of the general public. As part of the focus groups, participants were given two sets of cards: one with the names of 5 diseases (measles, typhoid, Ebola, hepatitis and flu) and one depicting 11 different transmission routes (e.g. touching surfaces, contaminated water). The participants were asked to match the transmission routes to the diseases. We analysed the discussions using BT to track real-time reasoning as the focus group conversations progressed. The focus group discussions revealed uncertainties around the ways in which the named diseases are spread and inaccurate understandings of the differences between certain transmission routes (e.g. kissing and sneezing). We argue that, when discussing specific diseases, the participants created generic spaces of disease knowledge in which many transmission routes were conceptualised as indistinguishable from one another. These generic spaces were then drawn upon when reasoning, leading to problematic and inaccurate conceptualisations of the specific disease in question. We also show how BT can be usefully applied to spoken data to analyse the creation of meaning in interactions about health and illness.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Analysing Health Communication |
| Subtitle of host publication | Discourse Approaches |
| Editors | Gavin Brookes, Daniel Hunt |
| Place of Publication | London |
| Publisher | Palgrave |
| Pages | 301-331 |
| Number of pages | 30 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 978-3-030-68184-5 |
| ISBN (Print) | 978-3-030-68183-8 |
| Publication status | Published - 20 May 2021 |
