BAME: ‘Black and Minority Ethnic or Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic is the terminology normally used in the UK to describe people of non-white descent’ (definition from the Institute of Race Relations – https://irr.org.uk/research/statistics/definitions/). However, there is significant ongoing debate about the appropriateness and use of these terms.
Big Data – Datasets which are too large for traditional analytical techniques on standard hardware.
Corpus: a collection of written or, usually transcribed, spoken texts that has been put together for linguistic analysis.
Corpus Linguistics: the analysis of collections of spoken and written texts, typically using specialist software to extract common patterns in language (e.g. the frequency and usage of specific words).
Discourse: written or spoken communication, including online communication.
Ethnicity/ Ethnic group: ‘A group of people whose members identify with each other through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, common culture (which can include a religion) and or an ideology which stresses a common ancestry. It is the way that most countries and peoples choose to delineate groups and has superseded the biological idea of ‘race’ (definition from the Institute of Race Relations: https://irr.org.uk/research/statistics/definitions ).
Human factors: concerns fitting technology, tasks and environments to the needs of the people who have to use them. It uses user-centred- design and psychology to understand human interaction and behaviours to support inclusive and accessible design.
Geographical borders: geographical boundaries of political or legal entities such as governments, sovereign states, federated states and other subnational entities. Borders are established through agreements between political or social entities that control those areas. This project is specifically interested in the differences in public health messaging within and between the borders of England, Scotland and Wales.
Language production: the production of spoken or written language (as opposed to language reception).
Language reception: here we use this term to refer to the language someone reads or hears (as opposed to language production).
Linguistic profiles: here we use this term as a description of the linguistic context and co-text in which public health messages are used (including their frequency in different contexts, their linguistic complexity, and the way they may change their meaning over time).
Privacy Enhancing Technologies: technologies which protect users by minimising personal data use, maximising data security and empowering individuals.
Privacy preserving corpus linguistics tool: software tools to analyse and provide insights into text data while preserving the anonymity of their authors.
Privacy Preserving Technologies: technologies which preserve the anonymity of their users.
Public health: The health of the population as a whole, especially as the subject of government regulation and support (Oxford Dictionary). Public Health is defined as “the art and science of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts of society” (Acheson, 1988; WHO)
Public health messaging: The term “health message” can apply to persuasive messages that are designed to change any behaviour within the realm of health care. Public health messaging specifically targets whole populations rather than individuals. These messages typically have been created using models and theories available from behaviour change research.
Trajectories: we will analyse the way in which public health messages change once they are released to the public through re-framing by recipients. This might involve a change in meaning or force (e.g. ‘you must stay at home’ might change to a less forceful ‘you should stay at home’ when it is reproduced over time by recipients of the message) or a change in frequency of use by different groups. Message trajectories are therefore linguistic descriptions of specific public health messages over a period of time.
Coronavirus image derived from public domain image, original photo credit to Alissa Eckert, MSMI & Dan Higgins, MAMS.