BibTeX

@inProceedings{kokkinakis-grahn-2014-corpus-209807,
	title        = {A corpus-based approach to the identification of non-literal language in a medical setting.},
	abstract     = {Automated processing of clinical texts is commonly faced with various less exposed, and not
so regularly discussed linguistically complex problems that need to be addressed. One of these issues
concerns the usage of figurative language. Figurative language implies the use of words that
go beyond their ordinary meaning, a linguistically complex and challenging problem and also a
problem that causes great difficulty for the field of natural language processing (NLP). The problem
is equally prevalent in both general language and also in various sublanguages, such as clinical
medicine. Therefore we believe that a comprehensive model of e.g. clinical language processing
needs to account for figurative language usage, and this paper provides a description, and preliminary
results towards this goal. Since the empirical, clinical data used in the study is limited in size,
there is no formal distinction made between different sub-classifications of figurative language. e.g.,
metaphors, idioms or simile. We illustrate several types of figurative expressions in the clinical discourse
and apply a rather quantitative and corpus-based level analysis. The main research questions
that this paper asks are whether there are traces of figurative language (or at least a subset of such
types) in patient-doctor and patient-nurse interactions, how can they be found in a convenient way
and whether these are transferred in the electronic health records and to what degree.},
	booktitle    = {Proceedings of the Conference on Communication, Medicine and Ethics (COMET), Lugano, 26-28 June 2014},
	author       = {Kokkinakis, Dimitrios and Grahn, Inga-Lill},
	year         = {2014},
	pages        = {1},
}