Liane Ströbel

A contrastive analysis of DISABILITY frames in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese online publications of the World Health Organization

Looking forward to The World Congress of Applied Linguistics „The dynamics of language, communication and culture in a changing world“ in Groningen, Netherlands, where I will talk about „A contrastive analysis of DISABILITY frames in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese online publications of the World Health Organization“.

Abstract:

Framing is defined as the means by which formation is organized, presented and interpreted. The World Health Organization, WHO is the United Nations coordinating authority for international public health. Its central task is to develop, standardize and globally enforce guidelines, standards and methods in health-related areas. Through its publication, it also significantly determines the way DISABILITY is reported in associated institutions or in the media. The repeated exposure to these frames activates and engrains a set of interpretations and might therefore have an impact in the public perception of DISABILITY.

The present study focuses on explicit and implicit frames that are used to describe the concept of DISABILITY in the multilingual texts published online on the WHO website.

In addition to the “World report on disability” (350-400 pages), which is published in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, bilingual publications such as the “WHO Global Disability Action Plan 2014-2021” and topic- and country-specific articles are also analyzed in order to identify similarities and differences between the individual languages. The talk will tackle the following point: a) are different languages using different frames for DISABILITY, b) can a difference between the frames used for mental and physical disabilities be stated/identified and c) to which extend do these official reports prevent or foster a possible stigmatization of disabled people/persons.

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