The Future of Education
Understanding Nursing-Specific Polysemous Terms: An Exploration with Hong Kong L2 Nursing Students
Mei Yung Vanliza Chow, Hong Kong Metropolitan University (Hong Kong)
Abstract
Extensive research has examined the types of discipline-specific vocabulary required by students across different fields. In nursing, certain general English words can acquire specialised meanings and convey nursing-specific knowledge through figurative extensions such as metaphor and metonymy. For L2 English learners (those learning English as a second language), recognising and understanding these general yet polysemous nursing-specific terms can be challenging. In this context, an exploratory study was conducted with ninety Hong Kong L2 nursing students to investigate the challenges they face when interpreting the figurative meanings of a nursing polysemous term. The term selected for the study was ‘line(s)’. The participants involved in the study were invited to explain the meanings of eight ‘line-related’ phrases that appeared in various oncology nursing research articles, with the aim of exploring the potential difficulties they encountered in interpreting the figurative extensions of this term. The findings indicate that the participants’ awareness of figurative extensions of nursing-specific polysemous terms needs to be strengthened. Additionally, explicit teaching of the detailed figurative mappings of frequently used metaphors in the nursing field - such as battle, race, and journey metaphors would be beneficial, as it can enhance nursing students’ understanding of nuanced nursing knowledge.
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Keywords |
Discipline-specific polysemous terms, nursing-specific terms, idiomatic expressions, figurative expressions, health-care communication |
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REFERENCES |
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