Representing Behavioral Pathology: The Importance of Modality in Medical Descriptions of Conduct, ADHD as Case Study

Vilar-Lluch, Sara

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.

Citation

Vilar-Lluch, S. (2022). Representing Behavioral Pathology: The Importance of Modality in Medical Descriptions of Conduct, ADHD as Case Study. Health Communication, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2022.2129649

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 22, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Oct 10, 2022
• Publication Date: Oct 10, 2022
• Deposit Date: Mar 24, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 27, 2023
• Journal: Health Communication
• Print ISSN: 1041-0236
• Electronic ISSN: 1532-7027
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 1-9
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2022.2129649
• Keywords: Communication; Health (social science)
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/12888044
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10410236.2022.2129649