Publications

Publication details [#66664]

Orletti, Franca. 2019. Latin as a tool for social differentiation and epistemic asymmetry. The language of medicine. Language and Dialogue 9 (1) : 106–124.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
Journal DOI
10.1075/ld

Annotation

The paper presents 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. This 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.