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Research Summary
Current Status
PhD (full-time) - currently registered
Research Topic
Sociolinguistics, specifically current representations of, and responses to, dementia.
Research Summary
My thesis aims to examine, through combining a range of approaches, how people living with dementia, as well as dementia as a topic, are visually and linguistically portrayed in British society, and the impact that these representations can have. Using corpus and critical discourse analysis, I analyse how British charities and the press currently represent dementia, alongside working with focus groups to consider a variety of other people's perspectives and personal engagements. Throughout my project, I ask the following key research questions:
- How do British charities and the British press represent dementia and people with dementia? What discourses are popularly reproduced by the two social institutions, and how are these visually and linguistically realised?
- What kinds of relationships do these two institutions and their discourses have, and how are they perceived by different members of the public?
- How do my findings of dementia discourses relate to the interpretations, opinions and experiences of a range of different individuals, notably people with a lived experience of dementia, those who are carers and/or related to someone with dementia, and individuals without personal experience of dementia?
Research Interests
Sociolinguistics (especially regarding communicating health, gender and age)
Dementia
Multimodality
Combining methodologies and approaches. These include using focus groups, interviews and textual analysis, as well as corpus linguistics, (multimodal) critical discourse analysis and thematic analysis.
Research Supervisors
Dr Kevin Harvey
Dr Daniel Hunt
Professor Tom Dening
Primary Funding Source
AHRC Midlands 3 Cities Doctoral Training Partnership
Research Institutes, Centres and/or Research Clusters Memberships
Centre for Research in Applied Linguistics
Centre for Dementia
Institute of Mental Health
Stylistics and Discourse Analysis Reading Group