Medical case reports and scientific thought-styles
Palabras clave:
medical writing, scientific thought-styles, genre conventions, stylistic features, narratives, vernacularisation, medical corporaResumen
This article continues a series of studies connected with the Scientific Thought-styles project (1995-), and discusses the formation of genre conventions of vernacular medical case reports in a long diachronic perspective. The theoretical background is explained first, with accompanying material from medical history and the philosophy of science. The epistemological status of the genre is on the practical side: besides theories, experience is valued, and relating what happened in a typical case of illness is the core function of the genre. In addition, the function of enhancing the efficacy of the cure grows prominent in some texts. Case studies are narratives of illness and endangered human life, and the model of natural narratives (Labov & Waletzky, 1967) can be identified in these stories. The method of analysis is qualitative and relies on illuminative examples from two electronic corpora Middle English Medical Texts (2005) and Early Modern Medical Texts (2010). The article finishes with a modern example that shows a shift to non-human technical facts.
Descargas
Citas
Primary sources
Arderne, J. (late 14th century/1910). Treatises of fistula in ano, haemorrhoids, and clysters by John Arderne (Early English Text Society O.S. 139.), (D. Power, Ed.). London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.
Bailey W. (1586/1616/1975). Treatises concerning the preseruation of eie-sight. The first written by Doctor Baily sometimes of Oxford: the other collected out of those two famous phisicions Fernelivs and Riolanus (4th ed.). Oxford: Ioseph Barnes for Iohn Barnes. Reproduced in facsimile in The English experience No. 709. Norwood, NJ & Amsterdam: Walter J. Johnson and Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.
Bats, A. S., Rockall, A. G., Singh, N., Reznek, R. H. & Jeyarajah, A. (2010). Perforation of a malignant ovarian tumor into the recto-sigmoid colon. Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica, 89, 1362-1363.
Gesner, C. (1559/1969). The treasure of Evonymvs, conteyninge the vvonderfull hid secretes of nature, touchinge the most apte formes to prepare and destyl medicines, for the conseruation of helth:... London: Iohn Daie. Reproduced in facsimile in The English experience No. 97. Amsterdam & New York, NY: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum and Da Capo Press.
Gilbertus Anglicus. (15th century/1991). Healing and society in medieval England: A Middle English translation of the pharmaceutical writings of Gilbertus Anglicus. (F. M. Getz, Ed.). Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press.
Grassus, B. (late 14th-15th century/1996). Benvenutus Grassus, the wonderful art of the eye: A critical edition of the Middle English translation of his De probatissima arte oculorum. (L. M. Eldredge, Ed.). East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.
Hall, J. (1679). Select observations on English bodies of eminent persons in desperate diseases. First written in Latin by Mr. John Hall, physician: After Englished by James Cook, author of the Marrow of chirurgery. To which is now added, an hundred like counsels and advices, for several honourable persons: By the same author... London: J. D. for Benjamin Shirley.
Torrella, G. (15th century/1937). An early English manuscript on syphilis: A fragmentary translation from the second edition of Gaspar Torrella’s Tractatus cum consiliis contra pudendagram seu morbum gallicum. (E. L. Zimmermann, Ed.). Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine, 5, 461-471.
Secondary sources
Banks, D. (2008). The development of scientific writing: Linguistic features and historical
context. London & Oakville: Equinox.
Crombie, A. C. (1994). Styles of scientific thinking in the European tradition: The history of argument and explanation, especially in the Mathematical and Biomedical Sciences and Arts (Vols. 1-3). London: Duckworth.
Crombie, A. C. (1995). Commitments and styles of European scientific thinking. History of Science, XXXIII, 225-238.
Dear, P. (1991). Narratives, anecdotes, and experiments: Turning experience into science in the seventeenth century. In P. Dear (Ed.), The literary structure of scientific argument: Historical studies (pp. 135-163). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Fludernik, M. (2007). Letter as narrative: Narrative patterns and episode structure in early letters, 1400 to 1650. In S. Fitzmaurice & I. Taavitsainen (Eds.), Methods in historical pragmatics (pp. 241-66). Berlin & NewYork, NY: Mouton de Gruyter.
French, R. (2003). Medicine before science: The business of medicine from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1988). On the language of Physical Science. In M. Ghadessy (Ed.), Registers of written English: Situational factors and linguistic features (pp. 162-178). London & New York, NY: Pinter Publishers.
Jones, C. (1998). Formula and formulation: “Efficacy phrases” in Medieval English medical manuscripts, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 99, 199-209.
Jones, P. M. (2010). Talk at a symposium on Late Modern English medical texts at the University of Helsinki, 22 October.
Labov, W. & Waletzky, J. (1967/1997). Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. In J. Helm (Ed.), Essays on the verbal and visual arts: Proceedings of the 1966 annual spring meeting of the American Ethnological Society (pp. 12-44). Seattle: American Ethnological Society. Reprinted in The Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7, 3-38.
Mäkinen, M. (2011). Efficacy phrases in Early Modern English medical recipes. In I. Taavitsainen & P. Pahta (Eds.), Medical writing in Early Modern English (pp. 158-178). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pahta, P. & Taavitsainen, I. (2004). Vernacularisation of scientific and medical writing in its sociohistorical context. In I. Taavitsainen and P. Pahta (Eds.), Medical and scientific writing in late medieval English (pp. 1-18). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pahta, P. & Taavitsainen, I. (2010). Scientific discourse. In A. H. Jucker & I. Taavitsainen (Eds.), Historical pragmatics (pp. 549-586). Berlin & New York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter.
Siraisi, N. G. (1991). Girolamo Cardano and the art of medical narrative. Journal of the History of Ideas, 52(4), 581-602.
Siraisi, N. G. (2007). History, medicine, and the traditions of Renaissance learning. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taavitsainen, I. (2001a). Changing conventions of writing: The dynamics of genres, text types, and text traditions. European Journal of English Studies, 5, 139-150.
Taavitsainen, I. (2001b). Middle English recipes: Genre characteristics, text type features and underlying traditions of writing. Journal of Historical Pragmatics, 2, 85-113.
Taavitsainen, I. (2002). Historical discourse analysis: Scientific language and changing thought-styles. In T. Fanego, B. Méndez-Naya & E. Seoane (Eds.), Sounds, words, texts and change: Selected papers from 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7-11 September 2000 (pp. 201-226). Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Taavitsainen, I. (2004). Transferring classical discourse conventions into the vernacular. In I. Taavitsainen & P. Pahta (Eds.), Medical and scientific writing in Late Medieval English (pp. 37-72). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taavitsainen, I. (2009a). The pragmatics of knowledge and meaning: Corpus linguistic approaches to changing thought-styles in Early Modern medical discourse. In A. H. Jucker, D. Schreier & M. Hundt (Eds.), Corpora: Pragmatics and discourse. Papers from the 29th International conference on English language research on computerized corpora (ICAME 29) (pp. 37–62). Amsterdam & New York, NY: Rodopi.
Taavitsainen, I. (2009b). “Joyful News out of the Newfound World”: Medical and scientific news reports in Early Modern England. In A. H. Jucker (Ed.), Early Modern English news discourse: Newspapers, pamphlets and scientific news discourse (pp.189-204). Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Taavitsainen, I. (2011). Narratives as literary commonplaces in Late Medieval and Early Modern medical writing. In G. Olsen (Ed.), Current trends in narratology (pp. 254-273). Berlin & New York, NY: De Gruyter.
Taavitsainen, I. & Pahta, P. (1995). Scientific ‘thought-styles’ in discourse structure: Changing patterns in a historical perspective. In B. Wårvik, S. K. Tanskanen & R. Hiltunen (Eds.), Organization in discourse: Proceedings from the Turku Conference (pp. 519–29). Turku: University of Turku.
Taavitsainen, I. & Pahta, P. (1998). Vernacularisation of medical writing in English: A corpus-based study of scholasticism. Early Science and Medicine, 3, 157–85.
Taavitsainen, I. & Pahta, P. (2000). Conventions of professional writing: The modern medical case report in a historical perspective. Journal of English Linguistics, 28, 60-76.
Tavormina, T. (Ed.). (2006). Sex, aging, & death in a medieval medical compendium: Trinity College Cambridge MS R.14.52, its texts, language, and scribe.
Toolan, M. (1988). Narrative: A critical linguistic introduction (London: Routledge).
Descargas
Publicado
Cómo citar
Número
Sección
Licencia
Aquellos autores/as que tengan publicaciones con esta revista, aceptan los términos siguientes:
- Los autores/as conservarán sus derechos de autor y garantizarán a la revista el derecho de primera publicación de su obra, el cuál estará simultáneamente sujeto a la Licencia de reconocimiento de Creative Commons que permite a terceros compartir la obra siempre que se indique su autor y su primera publicación esta revista.
- Los autores/as podrán adoptar otros acuerdos de licencia no exclusiva de distribución de la versión de la obra publicada (p. ej.: depositarla en un archivo telemático institucional o publicarla en un volumen monográfico) siempre que se indique la publicación inicial en esta revista.
- Se permite y recomienda a los autores/as difundir su obra a través de Internet (p. ej.: en archivos telemáticos institucionales o en su página web) antes y durante el proceso de envío, lo cual puede producir intercambios interesantes y aumentar las citas de la obra publicada. (Véase El efecto del acceso abierto).
Revista de Lenguas para fines específicos is licensed under a Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-SinObraDerivada 4.0 Internacional License.
