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Creating and Exploring Spoken Corpora of Health Communication for Second-Language Training Purposes

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Talking at Work

Part of the book series: Communicating in Professions and Organizations ((PSPOD))

Abstract

The objectives of this study were to create and explore comparable spoken corpora of health communication for second-language (L2) training purposes. A corpus creation methodology is proposed that enables eliciting language from several nurses (i.e., 15 anglophone; 15 francophone) from particular speech tasks (i.e., accompany a patient who received bad news; reformulate feelings in reaction to a diagnosis; and ensure a patient’s understanding of a situation). Findings are then presented from a function-to-form corpus analysis, which compared the types of responses and linguistic forms used by anglophone and francophone nurses to convey empathy/sympathy. The main findings illustrate that specialized, comparable spoken corpora are potentially useful for extracting recurring language use and making cross-linguistic comparisons. Overall, such corpora may ultimately be used to inform L2 pedagogy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Currently, the MHCTP is bilingual (i.e., English and French), however, there are plans to include other languages (e.g., Spanish) as well as add an L2 component, which is why we used the term “multilingual”.

  2. 2.

    One type of response, validating, was not identified by (Pudlinski 2005). However, because this response was frequently used in health communication literature, it was included for analysis.

  3. 3.

    In the French corpus, there were 15 francophone nurses. For this particular role play, however, there were technical difficulties with the recording of one nurse, reducing the sample to 14 francophone nurses, which is why there are fewer words and nurse participants in the French nurse transcripts than in the English nurse transcripts.

  4. 4.

    For all of the types of responses in the nurse transcript, all occurrences, including false starts, were counted.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sam Houston State University,, Huntsville,, Texas,, USA

    Leif French

  2. Université du Québec à Chicoutimi , Chicoutimi,, Quebec,, Canada

    Stephanie Lapointe

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  1. Leif French
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  2. Stephanie Lapointe
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Literature and Languages, Texas A&M University - Commerce, Commerce, Texas, USA

    Lucy Pickering

  2. Applied Linguistics and ESL, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Eric Friginal

  3. English, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA

    Shelley Staples

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French, L., Lapointe, S. (2016). Creating and Exploring Spoken Corpora of Health Communication for Second-Language Training Purposes. In: Pickering, L., Friginal, E., Staples, S. (eds) Talking at Work. Communicating in Professions and Organizations. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49616-4_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49616-4_11

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-49615-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-49616-4

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