Corpus data on metaphor in end-of-life care

This data collection consists of five different text corpora, i.e. large collections of language data, generated for the systematic analysis of the metaphors used by members of different stakeholder groups such as patients, unpaid family carers and healthcare professionals when talking about end-of-life care. One textual data file consists of transcribed interviews with 16 healthcare professionals. The remaining four consist of data drawn from publicly-accessible online fora: (1) the online forum for cancer patients and carers run by Macmillian Cancer Support; (2) the online forum “doc2doc” for health professionals run by the BMJ Publishing Group; (3) healthcare professionals’ responses to BMJ comment articles; and (4) blog posts on BMJ Blogs.
<p>The primary aim of this project is to investigate the use of metaphor in the experience of end-of-life care in the UK. A systematic analysis will be conducted of the metaphors used by members of different stakeholder groups (patients, unpaid family carers and healthcare professionals) in a 1.5-million-word corpus consisting of interviews and contributions to online fora.
The secondary aim of this project is to investigate the implications of the use of metaphor in the data for existing descriptions and theories of metaphor as a linguistic and cognitive phenomenon. The method that will be employed to identify and analyse metaphor in the data is both qualitative and quantitative. The most innovative aspect of this method is the exploitation of the semantic annotation tool within the online software tool Wmatrix, which will make it possible to identify metaphorical expressions more systematically than is currently possible with other corpus-based methods for the study of metaphor in large data sets.

The findings of the project will ultimately be relevant to the provision of end-of-life care, and to the consultancy for, and training of, health professionals.</p>

本数据集包含五个独立的文本语料库（text corpora，即大规模语言数据集合），专为系统分析不同利益相关方群体（如患者、无报酬家庭照护者与医疗专业人员）在讨论临终关怀（end-of-life care）时所使用的隐喻而构建。其中一份文本数据文件包含对16名医疗专业人员的转录访谈记录；其余四份数据均取自公开可访问的在线论坛：(1) 由Macmillian癌症支持组织（Macmillian Cancer Support）运营的癌症患者与照护者专属在线论坛；(2) 由BMJ出版集团（BMJ Publishing Group）运营的医疗专业人员专属在线论坛"doc2doc"；(3) 医疗专业人员针对《英国医学期刊》（BMJ）评论文章的回复内容；(4) 《英国医学期刊博客》（BMJ Blogs）上的博文内容。
本项目的核心目标是探究英国境内临终关怀体验中的隐喻使用情况。研究将对由访谈内容与在线论坛投稿组成的150万词语文本语料库中，不同利益相关方群体（患者、无报酬家庭照护者与医疗专业人员）所使用的隐喻开展系统分析。
本项目的次要目标是探究数据中隐喻使用情况对于现有将隐喻视为语言与认知现象的描述与理论的启示意义。本次研究将采用定性与定量相结合的方法，对数据中的隐喻进行识别与分析。该方法最具创新性的一点在于，充分利用了在线软件工具Wmatrix内置的语义标注工具，相较于当前主流的基于语料库的大规模数据集隐喻研究方法，能够更系统地识别隐喻表达。
本项目的研究成果最终将对临终关怀服务的开展，以及医疗专业人员的咨询服务与职业培训提供参考价值。