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- Title
How we think about depression: The role of linguistic framing.
- Authors
Reali, Florencia; Soriano, Tania; Rodríguez, Daniela
- Abstract
Descriptions of emotional disorders vary according to cultural and historical context. Framing mental illness as a disease --- as opposed to being a consequence of psychosocial factors --- has been proposed as a strategy to fight stigma in recent years. Here we combine two studies, a corpus analysis and an experimental survey, to explore this issue in the case of Spanish. First, we conducted a corpus analysis to investigate the patterns of linguistic framing of depression --- including disease-like descriptions and metaphorical frames --- using data from Latin American countries. Two main patterns were identified: (1) depression is frequently framed as a brain disease. In line with medicalization trends observed worldwide, this pattern has increased over time. (2) The data showed that depression is also metaphorically construed as a place in space or as an opponent. Second, we investigated whether the instantiation of subtle linguistic cues influences people's perception of a description of a hypothetical case of depression. A survey experiment conducted among Colombian students revealed that when depression was framed as a disease, the participants' perception of the depressed person's responsibility was reduced. Moreover, disease-like descriptions and metaphorical frames influenced participants' initial interpretations of the role of social causal factors.
- Subjects
MENTAL depression; FRAMES (Linguistics); MENTAL illness; COLOMBIAN students; CORPORA; EMOTIONAL trauma
- Publication
Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología, 2016, Vol 48, Issue 2, p127
- ISSN
0120-0534
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1016/j.rlp.2015.09.004