Terminology of Law and Public Health (TermoDiSP): a diachronic study to enhance terminological accessibility

• Grant number: 24/09203-6
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Young Investigators Grants
• Start date: October 01, 2025
• End date: September 30, 2030
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Applied Linguistics
• Principal Investigator: Beatriz Fernandes Curti Contessoto
• Grantee: Beatriz Fernandes Curti Contessoto
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina de São José do Rio Preto (FAMERP). São José do Rio Preto , SP, Brazil
• City of the host institution: São José do Rio Preto
• Associated researchers: Marcelo Arruda Nakazone ; Pascaline Dury
• Associated scholarship(s): 25/21130-7 - Terminology of Law and Public Health (TermoDiSP): a diachronic study to enhance terminological accessibility, BP.JP

Abstract

The TermoDiSP project aims to study, from a diachronic perspective, the legal terminology related to Public Health, with a focus on the themes of medical ethical conduct, vaccination, and the control of epidemics associated with mosquito-borne tropical diseases (arboviruses). The target audience is the lay and low-literacy population (focusing on adults aged 18 to 59), considering the Brazilian context regarding functional illiteracy rates. Within the scope of this project, the main objectives are: i) to identify the terminology in the fields of Law and Public Health related to medical ethical conduct, vaccination, and epidemic control concerning arboviruses in a legal normative corpus of Brazilian legislative texts from 1832 to 2023; ii) to examine the lexical production dynamics of terms related to these themes, identifying terminological cases of retrospective neology, necrology, and resurgence; iii) to observe the sociocultural and historical aspects underlying these terms; iv) to create a diachronic and terminologically accessible dictionary on the topics in focus (WEB platform format); and v) to develop educational material based on a data driven approach aimed at healthcare professionals engaged in continuing education, enabling them to learn plain language techniques and communicate more effectively and assertively with lay and low-literacy people. To this end, the research project is theoretically and methodologically grounded in Terminology studies, especially Diachronic Terminology and Terminography, Health Literacy, and Terminological Accessibility, in its interdisciplinarity with Corpus Linguistics, Law, Public Health, and Brazilian History studies. The project seeks to contribute to diachronic studies in Terminology, still incipient in Brazil, and to facilitate laypeople's access to specialized knowledge related to these themes inherent in the interdisciplinarity between Law and Public Health, with the aim of helping to combat the scientific denialism so prevalent in our society. (AU)