Titre :
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Chemotherapy as language : Sound symbolism in cancer medication names. (2008)
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Auteurs :
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ABEL (Gregory-A) : USA. Department of Medical Oncology. Center for Outcomes and Policy Research. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Boston. MA. ;
GLINERT (Lewis-H) : USA. Program in Linguistics and Cognitive Science. Dartmouth College. Hanover. NH.
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Type de document :
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Article
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Dans :
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Social science and medicine (vol. 66, n° 8, 2008)
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Pagination :
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1863-1869
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Langues:
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Anglais
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Mots-clés :
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Thérapeutique médicamenteuse
;
Chimiothérapie
;
Cancer
;
Langage
;
Médicament
;
Cancérologie
;
Commercialisation
;
Homme
;
Thérapeutique
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Résumé :
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[BDSP. Notice produite par INIST-CNRS R0xy0wE0. Diffusion soumise à autorisation]. The concept of sound symbolism proposes that even the tiniest sounds comprising a word may suggest the qualities of the object which that word represents. Cancer-related medication names, which are likely to be charged with emotional meaning for patients, might be expected to contain such sound-symbolic associations. We analyzed the sounds in the names of 60 frequently-used cancer-related medications, focusing on the medications'trade names as well as the names (trade or generic) commonly used in the clinic. We assessed the frequency of common voiced consonants (/b/d/g/v/z/thought to be associated with slowness and heaviness) and voiceless consonants (/p/t/k/f/s/thought to be associated with fastness and lightness), and compared them to what would be expected in standard American English using a reference dataset. A Fisher's exact test for independence showed the chemotherapy consonantal frequencies to be significantly different from standard English (p=0.009 for trade ; p
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