This project explores meaning making in written communication about the neurodevelopmental disorders autism, ADHD, OCD, and Tourette Syndrome (TS). The project seeks to answer the questions: What basic conceptualizations underlie representations of autism, ADHD, OCD, and TS in written communication and how do these relate to the overall communicative aims?
This project explores meaning making in written communication about the neurodevelopmental disorders autism, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and Tourette Syndrome (TS). Three language corpora will be compiled consisting of medical writing, patient-directed information, and patient-authored blogs/websites. The corpora will include comparable amounts of data for the disorders and will enable consideration of author and intended audience. The project will make use of quantitative and qualitative methods and will utilize tools for lexical and text analysis. The project draws upon recent contributions to theory/method-building in cognitive semantics and recent proposals in discourse studies. The project aims to delineate the conceptual structures that underlie representations of these disorders. The disorders will be considered individually and comparatively across text types. In research on communication around neurodevelopmental disorders there has been a shortage of semantic studies and corpus-oriented research. This study will work towards filling these gaps. The project seeks to answer the questions: What basic conceptualizations underlie representations of autism, ADHD, OCD, and TS in written communication and how do these relate to the overall communicative aims? Do medical practitioners and patients construct and use shared meaning systems relative to autism, ADHD, OCD, and TS?