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An investigation of the influence of gender, social class, age and illness type in the language of people talking about their experiences of illness. It shows evidence of both conformity with and resistance to gender stereotypes.

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Acknowledgements Gender and the Language of Illness Methods for Investigating Gender and Language Men´s Traditional Discourse of Illness: Distancing and Avoidance A Feminine Discourse of Illness: Transformation and Modality Emotional Disclosure: Socio-Economic Classification, Age and Gender Experience of Support: Gender, Social Class and Age Illness Type and Gender Conclusion Appendix 1 - Men´s Key Concepts (full matched sample) Appendix 2 - Women´s Key Concepts (full matched sample) Appendix 3 - Significance levels for log likelihood test Appendix 4 - Demographic Sample of the British National Corpus References Index

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JONATHAN CHARTERIS-BLACK is Professor of Linguistics in the University of the West of England, UK, and formerly Senior Lecturer at the University of Surrey. He is author of: Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis (2004), Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor (2005) and Communication and Leadership: The Design of Leadership Style (2006).

CLIVE SEALE is Professor of Medical Sociology at Queen Mary University of London, UK, where he works in the medical school. Previously he has been Professor of Sociology at Brunel University and at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is author of The Quality of Qualitative Research (1999), Constructing Death: the Sociology of Dying and Bereaevment (1998) and Media and Health (2002) as well as numerous other books, chapters and articles.

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