Research does not always begin in libraries. Sometimes it begins in the body.
My work on endometriosis language emerged from a simple but unresolved question: how do you communicate pain that resists measurement?
Key idea
When biomedical vocabulary fails, people construct metaphorical systems. Those systems can be analysed, modelled, and translated.
The Research Problem
Over several years, I examined how people living with endometriosis describe their pain and healthcare experiences. The data came from interviews, surveys, public forums, and clinician conversations.
What emerged was not inconsistency, but pattern.
- Metaphors of fire and burning
- Metaphors of pressure and crushing
- Metaphors of intrusion and invasion
- Metaphors of fragmentation and bodily disintegration
These were not random expressions. They formed structured semantic clusters.
The Communication Breakdown
Patients relied on metaphor because pain lacked stable terminology. Clinicians relied on biomedical coding because healthcare systems demand precision.
Between those two frameworks, meaning often fractured.
Diagnostic delay in endometriosis is influenced by multiple factors, but communication plays a measurable role.
If metaphor is interpreted as exaggeration rather than data, valuable information is lost.
From Analysis to Application
The next step was methodological: could metaphor patterns be formalised?
The research taxonomy became a structured classification system. The classification system became rule logic. The rule logic became a digital tool.
That tool is Explain My Pain.
It does not replace clinical judgement. It translates metaphorical descriptions into structured summaries, supporting clearer interaction between patient and professional.
Meaning Modelling as Practice
This trajectory — from lived experience to linguistic analysis to system design — illustrates what applied linguistics can do.
Language is not only something we interpret. It is something we can model, operationalise, and implement.
The scar remains part of the story. But it also became data, structure, and architecture.
Between linguistics and the scar lies a space where meaning is not only analysed, but built into tools that make understanding more possible.