Pragmatic discursive approach in the adaptation of a Health Literacy instrument

Abstract

In the field of health, understanding the use of language and its effects is becoming increasingly important. This idea is confirmed by our own experience in this study, in which we reflect on the concept of health literacy (HL) from an interdisciplinary perspective. We present a pragmatic-discursive proposal, based on Relevance Theory, to adapt and validate the New Sign of Life (NSV) questionnaire (originally formulated in English, within the framework of a qualitative study that includes discourse analysis as a method). In this process, presuppositions, implicatures and conclusions are considered as pragmatic categories in the semantic validation of the instrument. The results make visible the system of beliefs and attitudes and their impact on the field of HL. Possible future lines of research include the analysis of the effect of other extralinguistic elements on the sociocultural adaptation and validation of questionnaires that comprise health discourses and reproduce the practices associated with these discourses.