Curriculum Vitæ
Originally from the UK, she has a Bachelor’s degree in French and Hispanic Studies from The University of Liverpool (UK) and a Master’s degree in Interpreting and Translating from The University of Salford (UK).
She translates and proofreads scientific texts interdepartmentally (Departments of Engineering and Medicine), has carried out both consecutive and simultaneous interpreting for the Regione Campania and the European Commission (Universiade Napoli 2019; The Great Pompeii Project; UNESCO Universal Forum of Cultures 2014; The UN World Urban Forum 2012) and is registered with Naples Chamber of Commerce as an interpreter and translator.
She is a qualified English teacher (CELTA, DELTA – University of Cambridge), contract English professor in English for specific purposes at the Department of Medicine, University of Salerno and the Department of Agricultural Sciences, the University of Sassari as well as translator and interpreter. She is also Erasmus visiting research fellow at the Linguistic Profiling for Professionals Research Unit (LiPP) at the University of Nottingham (UK).
Her research interests include English for specific purposes (technical and scientific English), healthcare communication, sociolinguistics and corpus-based discourse analysis. She has authored several publications in national and international journals and has participated as speaker on an international level in various conferences in the linguistic field. She has experience in the organisation and moderation of international seminars and is currently guest editor for the International Identity, Language and Diversity Journal (I-LanD – 2021/2).
She is currently PhD Candidate at the University of Salerno in her final year of studies to obtain a PhD in Literary, Linguistic and Historical Studies (35th Cycle) with the Department of Humanities and her research project falls under the linguistic profile.
Overview of Research Project
Supervisor
Miriam Voghera, University of Salerno
Co-supervisor
Raffaela Merlini, University of Macerata
Title
A Corpus Based Analysis of Healthcare Communication and Interaction through Cosmetic Surgery Discourses
This multidisciplinary research project aims to analyse and evaluate healthcare communication within the field of cosmetic surgery. The socio-health field and an analysis of the language used within the context of doctor-patient interaction takes into consideration various disciplines such as sociology, psychology as well as linguistics.
Cosmetic surgery can indeed be considered synonymous of youth and therefore beauty, which in turn, can become a tool for professional and social success along with happiness. This combination of beauty and success and the desire to remain ever young by undergoing cosmetic surgery raises questions of gender, age and identity.
Therefore, the aim of this research is to collect a sociolinguistic corpus of approximately 20 hours of audio recordings to be transcribed and analysed. Ethnographic questionnaires will be utilised, semi-structured interviews will be carried out and the doctor-patient consultations themselves among plastic surgeons and patients will be recorded. The analysis will focus on the social variables of age and gender with a particular focus on linguistic, lexical and semantic characteristics which will be specifically selected for analysis once the corpus is complete. Furthermore, there will be particular attention paid to the variable of identity. In order to carry out both qualitative and quantitative analysis, specific software will be employed for corpus based analysis.
A study of this type also looks to offer insight into the communication which takes place within the sector aiming to raise awareness among medical professionals regarding the language to be used in doctor-patient interactions.
