The Popularization of Psychiatric Discourse in the Media

In her paper on The Popularization of Psychiatric Discourse in the Media, Paola Leotta analyses the linguistic resources used to support recommendations in psychiatric advice on panic and anxiety disorders through the analysis of an online coursebook that has been selected among several online sources of psychiatry and popular psychology explained to lay people in the Media.Drawing on Gallardo’s (2005) taxonomy- ‘comprehension-ensuring function’, ‘facilitating function’, ‘empathy function’-, Paola Leotta analyses, both quantitatively and qualitatively, 91 excerpts that contain recommendations, with a focus on how information is offered. It is argued that patients are more motivated to comply with advice when they receive enough information about their illness. The findings suggest that the function of offering information has the highest frequency, followed by the function of reformulation, which may indicate that the writer, acting as a ‘knowledge mediator’, has built his text in such a way that the reader would clearly be informed so to accept the recommendations in order to carry out the proposed action. Rather than ‘explaining’ psychiatry, this new type of discourse sets out to ‘represent’ psychiatry in social life, thus contributing to a better public understanding of science and going beyond the linguistic and communicative functions of this micro- language.