HSSRC
Case Study
The Nottingham Health Communication
Corpus
Professor Ronald Carter, Dr Svenja Adolphs, Dr Kevin Harvey, Centre for
Research in Applied Linguistics, School of English Studies and Dr Paul Crawford,
School of Nursing, University of Nottingham.
The partnership programme was sponsored by the University of Nottingham Research
Strategy Funds and Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust. The project has allowed a
half million word corpus of spoken interaction between health care professionals and
patients to be documented and analyzed. This knowledge brings direct benefit to the
participating NHS services in terms of how staff are trained, and how services might be
best communicated to the public.
Applied Linguistics is essentially an
interdisciplinary area of research. The
ubiquitous and central role of language in
human social interactions means that there is
almost no area of research in which linguistic
factors are not relevant.
The Nottingham Health Communication
Corpus focuses on the use of language in
health communication documenting and
analysing interactions between differing
Impacts
1) A greater understanding of the
language used in exchanges with
patients and the different
participating sections of the NHS.
2) The identification of protocols,
politeness and styles of delivering
messages to ensure clarity with
different groups.
3) Increased effectiveness of the NHS
Direct service through improved
communication.
patient groups and healthcare professionals
across the breadth of health services.
Specific projects have included:
 Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS
Trust (analysis of health
communication);
 NHS Direct (Health communication
and effective diagnosis);
 Teenage Health Freak team (Oxford
GPs, analysis of health
communication)