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Publication details [#16468]

Skelton, John. 1997. The Representation of Truth in Academic Medical Writing. Applied Linguistics 18 (2) : 121–140.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
Oxford University Press
ISBN
0142-6001

Annotation

This study considers the way in which medical writers talk about things which they deem to be true, possible, and untrue. The study considers research papers drawn from three leading medical journals, published since 1991. Three main types of truth are identified: contextualized truth, evidential truth, and interpreted truth. These deal, respectively, with truth as the research tradition states it to be, truth as the statistical evidence states it to be, and truth as a matter of deriving possible non-statistical meaning from findings. Writers also make frequent explicit reference to the extent to which they are committed to the propositions expressed in statements about truth: the manner in which they do so is discussed, with a distinction being drawn between propositions and comments.