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Article published In:
Dialogue in institutional settings
Edited by Franca Orletti and Letizia Caronia
[Language and Dialogue 9:1] 2019
► pp. 106–124

Latin as a tool for social differentiation and epistemic asymmetry

The language of medicine

| University of Roma Tre (Italy)

The paper aims to present the outcome of a research on the persistence of Latin in Medical Language. The analysis has been carried out on written and spoken data: clinical records; doctor-patient interactions; prescriptions; package information leaflets. The study shows that in medical communication Latin is used as a tool for social and epistemic discrimination, to increase the knowledge gap among professionals and lay people. A different way to reaffirm the voice of medicine against the voice of life. Our project is inserted in the series of studies dedicated to languages for specific purposes understood not only as specific vocabularies but mostly as “discursive patterns” that express precise and distinctive professional visions.

Keywords: language of medicine, Latinism, epistemic asymmetry, language for specific purposes, doctor-patient interaction
Article outline
  • 1.Objectives
  • 2.The reasons for the complexity of Medical Language: Language of medicine as specialized language
  • 3.The language of doctors in history
  • 4.The research
    • 4.1Theoretical background
    • 4.2Data
    • 4.3The analysis
    • 4.4The interview
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Sources
Published online: 5 July 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00034.orl
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