Representing behavioral pathology: the importance of modality in medical descriptions of conduct, ADHD as case study

Vilar-Lluch, Sara 2023. Representing behavioral pathology: the importance of modality in medical descriptions of conduct, ADHD as case study. Health Communication 38 (13) , pp. 3022-3030. 10.1080/10410236.2022.2129649

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Abstract

This paper examines the role of modality resources (e.g. “may,” “often”) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) in representing behavioral pathology focusing, in particular, on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). ADHD diagnosis requires reports of non-practitioners (e.g. carers and teachers); an effective understanding of behavioral descriptors by the lay community is thus of paramount importance. The study combines qualitative linguistic discourse analysis and a corpus approach to study the presence and functions of modality, adopting a Systemic Functional perspective toward language. The study argues that in the DSM-5 modality is an important linguistic resource for conveying clinical significance, inferred from graduations of recurrence and probability. However, adopting features of professional discourse in representing behavioral pathology for non-experts, especially when those resources are inherently evaluative, stresses the need of health literacy among the lay social community and accessibility in health communication materials, particularly when non-practitioners are involved in the diagnosis practice.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Publisher:	Taylor and Francis Group
ISSN:	1041-0236
Last Modified:	16 Sep 2024 13:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/171823

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