Purpose: To describe embodied language for Japanese elders who suffered a stroke or cardiac disease within the previous year. Embodied language is the overlap of feeling and temporal word use with blood pressure during descriptions of health experience.
Design: Exploratory.
Methods: Blood pressure and word use were recorded simultaneously when 17 cardiac and 20 stroke participants described their health experiences for 4 minutes. Blood pressure was measured using a tonometric monitor and word use was measured using linguistic analysis software. Descriptive and nonparametric statistics were used.
Findings: Participants with strokes retained higher blood pressure after talking than did cardiac participants. The two groups showed contrasting relationships between word use and blood pressure, particularly for temporal words.
Conclusions: This collaborative research between Japanese and American colleagues was a step toward deciphering shared values, which are important to understanding health for people who have lived through life-changing illness events.