The Language of Pain: Expression Or Description? (Converging Evidence
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The Language of Pain Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research (CELCR) Over the past decades, linguists have taken a broader view of language and are borrowing methods and findings from other disciplines such as cognition and computer sciences, neurology, biology, sociology, psychology, and anthropology. This development has enriched our knowledge of language and communication, but at the same time it has made it difficult for researchers in a particular field of language studies to be aware of how their findings might relate to those in other (sub-)disciplines. CELCR seeks to address this problem by taking a cross-disciplinary approach to the study of language and communication. The books in the series focus on a specific linguistic topic and offer studies pertaining to this topic from different disciplinary angles, thus taking converging evidence in language and communi- cation research as its basic methodology. Editor Marjolijn H. Verspoor Wilbert Spooren University of Groningen Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Advisory Board Walter Daelemans Leo Noordman University of Antwerp Tilburg University Cliff Goddard Martin Pütz University of New England University of Koblenz-Landau Roeland van Hout Radboud University Nijmegen Volume 9 The Language of Pain. Expression or description? Chryssoula Lascaratou The Language of Pain Expression or description? Chryssoula Lascaratou University of Athens John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of 8 American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lascaratou, Chryssoula. The Language of Pain : expression or description? / Chryssoula Lascaratou. p. cm. -- (Converging evidence in language and communication research, issn 1566- 7774 ; v. 9) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Psycholinguistics--Data processing. 2. Pain--Data processing. 3. Lexicology-- Data processing. 4. Greek language, Modern--Psychological aspects--Data processing. I. Title. P37.5.D37L37 2007 410.1'9--dc22 2007026886 isbn 978 90 272 3896 2 (Hb; alk. paper) © 2007 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa for Angelos Table of contents Acknowledgements xi chapter 1 Introduction 1 chapter 2 Pain and language 9 2.1 Introduction 9 2.2 The language of pain 13 2.2.1 What is pain? 14 2.2.1.1 The IASP definition and reasons for adopting it 15 2.2.1.2 Other attempts at interpreting and defining pain 16 2.2.2 What is language for pain? 19 2.2.2.1 Wittgenstein’s ‘private language argument’ and pain 20 2.2.2.2 The function of pain language: Expressive and/or descriptive? 24 2.2.2.3 How is pain transformed into language? 27 2.2.3 What is pain for language? 28 chapter 3 Corpus design and data collection 31 chapter 4 Mode of analysis 37 4.1 Introduction 37 4.2 Halliday’s process types in modelling experience 38 chapter 5 Data analysis and general discussion 45 5.1 Introduction 45 5.2 Pain: Process, participant or quality? 45 5.3 Key lexical items and their frequencies 50 The Language of Pain chapter 6 The construal of pain as process 59 6.1 Introduction 59 6.2 Foolen’s account of the communication of emotions and pain behaviour 59 6.3 General characteristics of pain as process 61 6.4 Process types and structural functions in ponao constructions 73 6.4.1 Concluding remarks 100 chapter 7 The construal of pain as thing-participant 103 7.1 Introduction 103 7.2 Grammatically construed semantic properties of ponos 104 7.2.1 Ponos as a bounded or an unbounded thing 104 7.2.2 Ponos as a possession: Acquired, received, owned, and lost 106 7.2.3 The temporal location and extent of ponos 108 7.2.4 The accompanying conditions of ponos: A temporal nexus 110 7.2.5 The variable location of ponos within the body 111 7.2.6 The degree of intensity and the variable qualities ofponos : Mapping the Greek data onto the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) 113 7.2.6.1 The intensity of pain 115 7.2.6.2 The variable qualities of pain 118 7.2.7 Concluding remarks 123 7.3 Structural configurations featuring ponos as participant 124 7.3.1 Concluding remarks 132 chapter 8 Pain and metaphor 133 8.1 Introduction 133 8.2 The conceptual grounding of ponos metaphors and their linguistic realisation 139 8.2.1 The grammaticalisation of ponos as object of the verbs exo, esθanome, and njoθo 140 8.2.2 The grammaticalisation of ponos as subject in intransitive structures 147 8.2.3 The grammaticalisation ofponos as subject in transitive structures 155 8.2.4 The construal ofponos as circumstance of cause 170 8.2.5 The grammaticalisation of ponos as object in transitive structures 172 8.3 Lost for words 174 8.4 Concluding remarks 178 Table of contents chapter 9 Conclusions 183 References 197 Appendix A: Pain as process. Mapping Greek ‘pain’ expressions onto Halliday’s paradigm of English ones 207 Appendix B: Pain as thing. Mapping Greek ‘pain’ expressions onto Halliday’s paradigm of English ones 215 Appendix C: Typical corpus dialogues presented in full 219 1. Private physiotherapy clinic. Dialogue No 6 219 2. Metaxa Cancer Hospital, pain management clinic. Dialogue No 17 227 Name index 233 Subject index 235 Acknowledgements It is with great pleasure that I acknowledge my debt to the many people who of- fered me their help in various respects and at various stages of the preparation of this book. I would like to express my gratitude and indebtedness to Dimitra Theophano- poulou-Kontou for her instructive comments on an earlier version of this book. I am mostly indebted and grateful to Zoltán Kövecses for carefully reading the man- uscript and generously giving me so much of his time in inspiring and stimulating discussions. In particular, much of what is worthwhile in the chapter on pain and metaphor has its roots in what I learnt from him. Above all, I wish to thank Zoltán for showing interest in my work and being a constant source of encouragement, support and invaluable advice. I would also like to express my sincere thanks to Ourania Hatzidaki not only for generously offering me her expertise in various aspects of the statistical analy- sis of the data and her constructive comments on related parts of the manuscript, but also for genuinely sharing my deep involvement in exploring the complexities of pain through its linguistic dimension. Special thanks are due to many colleagues, students, and friends for their en- couragement and many constructive discussions and comments. Among those, I wish to extend my thanks to Athanassios Alexandridis, Sophia Antonakaki, Bessie Dendrinos, Georgia Frangaki, Dionysis Goutsos, Elly Ifantidou, Nikos Karan- dreas, Sophia Marmaridou, Spiros Moschonas, Anastasia Papaconstantinou, Irene Philippaki-Warburton, Antigone Philippopoulou, Mary Sifianou, Ioannis Veloud- is, and David Warburton. I am greatly indebted to Palina Karakasidou, Georgia Petta (Department of Physiotherapy, Technological Education Institute of Athens – TEI), Stavros Sta- thopoulos (Physiotherapy Clinic, Evangelismos Hospital), Costas Levidiotis (Or- thopedics Clinic, Evgenidio Hospital), Calliope Kastrinaki (Pain Clinic, Metaxa Cancer Hospital), Michel Amari, Katerina Harkiolaki, Yannis Paxinos (Pain Clin- ic, Patision General Prefectural Hospital), and Michalis Seferiadis (Physiotherapy Clinic, Patision General Prefectural Hospital) for participating in the project by supplying the recorded material. I also wish to express my sincere thanks to the The Language of Pain students of the Faculty of English Studies (University of Athens) Panagoula Barlia, Spyridoula Dimopoulou, Dimitris Farmakis, Christina Karamouza, Maria Karteri, Constantina Kotsira, Constantina Liontou, Kyriaki Mantzarli, Eleni Mouzouraki, Efstathios Nikolopoulos, Despina Panou, Ekaterini Pappa, Paschalia Patsala, Maria Pepe, Loukia Sigala, Eleni Taratsa, Evdoksia Tsiombika and Alexandros Velaoras for transcribing the recordings. The collection and transcription of the data might not have been attained without the considerable assistance of all the above. I am also particularly indebted to Fanis Papoutsis for his valuable assistance in the preparation of Appendix C. I would like to record my very special thanks and deepest gratitude to Micha- lis Georgiafentis for the patience, enthusiasm, and dedication with which he so selflessly assisted me in various aspects of this work. In particular, I am indebted to Michalis for eagerly offering his expertise and willingly devoting valuable time in sharing with me the burden of editing this work. My most whole-hearted thanks go to Dorothy Richardson for readily making the time to proof-read the whole manuscript and add an expert’s final touches to the text. On a more personal note, I would like to express my gratitude and warmest thanks to my son Angelos Aivazis for his loving support, understanding, and unique sense of humour, which made the completion of this work much more enjoyable and less painful. This book has benefited from all those acknowledged above, but of course all inadequacies and infelicities that may remain are entirely my own. Finally, I wish to apologise to anyone I have inadvertently omitted. chapter 1 Introduction This book is the outcome of a long-term, large-scale, data-based investigation of the linguistic manifestation of physical pain in Modern Greek. The linguistic pat- terning (lexico-phraseological choices, grammatical structures, and linguistic metaphors) of pain is investigated by observing how pain is talked about in a spe- cialised, coherent and intensively studied electronic corpus of 131 spontaneous dialogues (69,996 words) between pain-suffering patients and health care profes- sionals, recorded over a period of 22 months.