Large-scale patterns of number use in spoken and written English.

This paper describes patterns of number use in spoken and written English and the main factors that contribute to these patterns. We analysed more than 1.7 million occurrences of numbers between 0 and a billion in the British National Corpus, including conversational speech, presentational speech (e.g., lectures, interviews), imaginative writing (e.g., fiction), and informative writing (e.g., academic books). We find that four main factors affect number frequency: (1) Magnitude - smaller numbers are more frequent than larger numbers; (2) Roundness - round numbers are more frequent than unround numbers of a comparable magnitude, and some round numbers are more frequent than others; (3) Cultural salience - culturally salient numbers (e.g., recent years) are more frequent than non-salient numbers; and (4) Register - more informational texts contain more numbers (in writing), types of numbers, decimals, and larger numbers than less informational texts. In writing, we find that the numbers 1-9 are mostly represented by number words (e.g., 'three'), 10-999,999 are mostly represented by numerals (e.g., '14'), and 1 million-1 billion are mostly represented by a mix of numerals and number words (e.g., '8 million'). Altogether, this study builds a detailed profile of number use in spoken and written English.

Child abuse linked to faith or belief: working towards recognition in practice.

Child abuse linked to faith or belief (CALFB) is a worldwide issue that is linked to serious short-term and long-term consequences and even death. Children affected by CALFB may have undergone multiple abuses - such as ritual starvation, beatings, burns, stabbings and drowning - prompting concern in hospitals, schools and communities, including in emergency and primary care settings. Nurses have an important role in safeguarding children and young people, and their role in identifying and responding to CALFB is often challenging. This article uses a 'competemility' (cultural competence and cultural humility) approach to raise awareness of CALFB reporting and investigations in the UK. It examines medical evidence and psychosocial indicators of this form of abuse and explains the metaphorical language and thoughts associated with reported beliefs. The article aims to support nurses to be culturally sensitive to CALFB and to explore how they can contribute to preserve the safety of children in familial and community settings.

Metaphors that shape parents' perceptions of effective communication with healthcare practitioners following child death: a qualitative UK study.

OBJECTIVES: To offer an interpretation of bereaved parents' evaluations of communication with healthcare practitioners (HCPs) surrounding the death of a child. DESIGN: Interpretative qualitative study employing thematic and linguistic analyses of metaphor embedded in interview data. SETTING: England and Scotland. PARTICIPANTS: 24 bereaved parents (21 women, 3 men). METHODS: Participants were recruited through the True Colours Trust website and mailing list, similar UK charities and word of mouth. Following interviews in person or via video-conferencing platforms (Skype/Zoom), transcripts first underwent thematic and subsequently linguistic analyses supported by NVivo. A focused analysis of metaphors used by the parents was undertaken to allow in-depth interpretation of how they conceptualised their experiences. RESULTS: The findings illuminate the ways parents experienced communication with HCPs surrounding the death of a child. Key findings from this study suggest that good communication with HCPs following the death of a child should acknowledge parental identity (and that of their child as an individual) and offer opportunities for them to enact this; taking account their emotional and physical experiences; and accommodate their altered experiences of time. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that HCPs when communicating with bereaved parents need to recognise, and seek to comprehend, the ways in which the loss impacts on an individual's identity as a parent, the 'physical' nature of the emotions that can be unleashed and the ways in which the death of a child can alter their metaphorical conceptions of time.

Effective Communication Following Pregnancy Loss: A Study in England.

Each year in the UK there are approximately 250,000 miscarriages, 3,000 stillbirths and 3,000 terminations following a diagnosis of fetal-abnormality. This paper draws from original empirical research into the experience of pregnancy loss and the accompanying decisionmaking processes. A key finding is that there is considerable variation across England in the range of options that are offered for disposal of pregnancy remains and the ways in which information around disposal are communicated. This analysis seeks to outline the key features of what constitutes effective communication in this context, where effective communication is taken to mean that patients are provided with the key information necessary, in an appropriate manner, so that they are fully able to make a decision. A primary source of evidence includes interviews with the bereaved and pregnancy-loss support workers, in order to understand how the options available, and associated necessary procedures, are communicated. In addition, patient information leaflets are also analyzed as they offer an important tool for information delivery at a difficult and emotionally charged time. Following this, an overview is provided of the information that these leaflets should contain, along with guidance on effective presentation of this information.

'Tiny numbers' are actually tiny: Evidence from gestures in the TV News Archive.

We report a large-scale, quantitative investigation of manual gestures that speakers perform when speaking metaphorically about numerical quantities. We used the TV News Archive-an online database of over 2 million English language news broadcasts-to examine 681 videos in which 584 speakers used the phrase 'tiny number', 'small number', 'large number', or 'huge number', which metaphorically frame numerical quantity in terms of physical size. We found that the gestures speakers used reflect a number of different strategies to express the metaphoric size of quantities. When referring to greater versus lesser quantities, speakers were far more likely to gesture (1) with an open versus closed hand configuration, (2) with an outward versus inward movement, and (3) with a wider distance between the gesturing hands. These patterns were often more pronounced for the phrases containing more extreme adjectives ('tiny/huge number'). However, we did not find that speakers performed two-handed versus one-handed gestures. Nor did we find that speakers performed right-handed versus left-handed gestures, when referring to greater versus lesser quantities. Overall, this work supports the claim that metaphoric thought is involved in the production of verbal metaphors that describe numerical magnitudes. It demonstrates that size-based numerical associations observed in previous lab experiments are active in real-life communication outside the lab.