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Article published In: Language, Context and Text
Vol. 1:1 (2019) ► pp.39–64

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An exploratory account of the register of nursing textbooks

Can you nurse from them?

ORCiD logo with link | The University of Sydney
Published online: 4 February 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/langct.00003.gar
Abstract
Given the pressing issues that affect nursing education (e.g. higher attrition and plagiarism rates), this study aims to obtain initial insight on whether nursing textbooks meet the demands of their context of situation. These demands could be listed as: construing biomedical knowledge, establishing a pattern of evidence-based nursing practice and promoting the values of person-centred care. For this analysis, I draw on aspects of parameters of context developed by . 2004. Analysing discursive variation. In Lynn Young & Claire Harrison (eds.), Systemic functional linguistics and critical discourse analysis: Studies in social change, 15‒52. London & New York: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, Butt, David. 2004. Parameters of context: On establishing the similarities and differences between social processes. Unpublished mimeo, Macquarie University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar and Matthiessen, Christian M. I. M. 2015. Register in the round: Registerial cartography. Functional Linguistics 21. 1–48. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, and relate them to their semantic and lexicogrammatical realisation across different metafunctions using corpus-based techniques and detailed manual analysis of short extracts. The results may suggest that nursing textbooks may be meeting the demands of nursing as a research-based discipline but failing to model empathetic communication.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Why focus on nursing?
  • 3.What is this discipline called nursing?
  • 4.A note on the modelling of context in SFL
  • 5.The construal of biomedical knowledge in nursing textbooks
  • 6.Epistemological stance in nursing textbooks
  • 7.Care, compassion and communication
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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Bednarek, Monika, Peter Crosthwaite & Alexandra I. García
2020. Corpus linguistics and education in Australia. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 43:2 ► pp. 105 ff. DOI logo

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