Stress management: corpus-based insights into vernacular interpretations of stress.
Examination of the term stress in naturally occurring vernacular prose provides evidence of three separate senses being conflated. A corpus analysis of 818 instances of stress from non-academic texts in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the Corpus of American Discourses on Health (CADOH) shows a negative prosody for stress, which is portrayed variously as a source outside the body, a physical symptom within the body and an emotional state. The data show that contemporary speakers intermingle the three senses, making more difficult a discussion between doctors and patients of ways to 'reduce stress: when stress might be interpreted as a stressor, a symptom, or state of anxiety. This conflation of senses reinforces the impression that stress is pervasive and increasing. In addition, a semantic shift is also refining a new sense for stress, as post-traumatic stress develops as a specific subtype of emotional stress whose use has increased in circulation in the past 20 years.
Laurel Smith
LS
Stvan
D015706:Bibliometrics; D003142:Communication; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D010506:Periodicals as Topic; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy*; D009626:Terminology as Topic