Corpus Pragmatic Studies on the History of Medical Discourse

Editors

Turo Hiltunen | University of Helsinki,

Irma Taavitsainen | University of Helsinki,

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027211101 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027257741 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00

The original studies in this volume provide new insights into the history of medical discourse across centuries in both professional and lay texts. The central themes deal with changes in medical writing in various societal and cultural contexts in search for best practices in corpus pragmatics for future work. Some studies apply quantitative methods of corpus linguistics and Digital Humanities, others adopt a qualitative, discourse-analytical perspective, focusing on particular texts, authors or medical topics, or specific functionally-defined discourse forms such as narratives. Quantitative and qualitative approaches are mutually complementary and shed light on different aspects of historical medical discourse. The methodologies aim at establishing validity and reliability for pragmatic analysis, taking into account relevant contextual factors and insights from other fields, such as medical and social history, history of ideas, and science studies.

[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 330] 2022. vii, 322 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.330

Table of Contents

Preface | pp. vii–viii

Chapter 1. Corpora, pragmatics, and historical medical discourse

Turo Hiltunen and Irma Taavitsainen | pp. 1–20

Part I. Tracing discursive changes

Chapter 2. “A geography of names”: A genre analysis of nationality-driven names for venereal disease in seventeenth-century England

Tony McEnery and Helen Baker | pp. 23–48

Chapter 3. Medical topics and style from 1500 to 2018: A corpus-driven exploration

Gerold Schneider | pp. 49–78

Chapter 4. Medical discourse in Late Modern English: Insights from a multidisciplinary corpus of scientific journal articles

Katrin Menzel | pp. 79–104

Chapter 5. Survival or death: Mine/my and thine/thy variation in Early Modern English medical writing

Terry Walker and Merja Kytö | pp. 105–126

Chapter 6. Towards a local grammar of stance expression in Late Modern English medical writing

Turo Hiltunen | pp. 127–152

Chapter 7. “Die Blumenzeit der Frau”: A corpus-based study of the development of medical references to menstruation in historical texts on herbology

Gohar Schnelle, Carolin Odebrecht, Anke Lüdeling, Laura Perlitz and Catharina Fisher | pp. 153–176

Part II. Changing functions, roles and representations

Chapter 8. Language, labour and ideology: Constructing epistemologies of childbirth in the first three centuries of English-language midwifery texts (1540–1800)

Richard J. Whitt | pp. 179–202

Chapter 9. Unhappy patients and eminent physicians: The representation of patients and practitioners in Late Modern English medical writing

Anu Lehto | pp. 203–228

Chapter 10. The discursive dynamics of personal experience narratives and medical advice in 18th-century British consultation letters: The case of Dr. William Cullen

Anna Franca Plastina | pp. 229–250

Chapter 11. Communicating authority: Self-mentions in Early Modern English medical narratives (1500–1700)

Karoliina Ollikainen | pp. 251–272

Chapter 12. How old is old? The discourse of “good” ageing in nineteenth-century self-help medical texts

Kim Grego | pp. 273–296

Chapter 13. The popularization of learned medicine in late seventeenth-century England: Accommodating translation strategies and textual aspects

Giulia Rovelli | pp. 297–316

Index | pp. 317–322

“One remarkable strength of this book is that combining quantitative and qualitative analyses to explore pragmatic aspects of medical writing allows readers to obtain a multi-faceted view of what the medical discourse was like in earlier times and to advance the understanding of variations in pragmatic meaning. Beyond question, corpus pragmatic studies have extended the boundary of pragmatics regarding the scope and methods and will further contribute to the development of pragmatic theories. [...] The volume is well-suited for the general public and academics interested in medical discourse and the synergy between corpus linguistics and pragmatics.”

Zhonghua Wu, Zhejiang University City College & Le Cheng, Zhejiang University, in Journal of Pragmatics 202 (2022).

Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Whitt, Richard J.

2023. Irma Taavitsainen, Turo Hiltunen, Jeremy J. Smith and Carla Suhr (eds.), Genre in English medical writing, 1500–1820: Sociocultural contexts of production and use (Studies in English Language). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. xviii + 322. ISBN 9781009108683.. English Language and Linguistics 27:3 ► pp. 629 ff.

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