Il saggio si propone di esplorare in che modo l'influsso di eventi traumatici come le guerre possa influire sul linguaggio di testi come quelli medici, con un alta livello di specializzazione. L'analisi si fonda su un mini corpus creato ad hoc a partire da articoli selezionati dal British Medical Journal, dal Journal of the Canadian Medical Association, integrati da una selezione di articoli tratti dalle pubblicazione del Borden Institute (US Army Medical Department Center & School). Il mini corpus copre il periodo dalla prima alla seconda guerra mondiale (incluse), con articoli più recenti per quanto riguarda le pubblicazioni del Borden Institute. La prospettiva diacronica dell'analisi mira ad esplorare i "linguaggi della malattia" per evidenziare convenzioni linguistiche e di genere, particolari "modi di vedere" e dunque di esprimere, e innovazioni linguistiche, con particolare attenzione a schemi ricorrenti e a strategie emotive.
To what extent do the traumatic events of wartime shape the language of texts with a high degree of technicality, such as medical texts written by subject specialists for their peers? This question is the starting point for the analysis of a mini-corpus consisting of articles from the “British Medical Journal” and the “Journal of the Canadian Medical Association”, and supplemented with extracts from selected publications of the Borden Institute (US Army Medical Department Center & School). The mini-corpus covers the period of the First and Second World Wars, and also includes a selection of articles written at the time of the Korean and Vietnam wars, as well as during the present war experience in Afghanistan. The diachronic perspective of the analysis aims to explore the “discourses of illness” in order to highlight linguistic and genre conventions (recurring “ways of putting things”, Kennedy 1992) as well as innovations: domain-specific verbs (but also their nominal and adjectival forms) and patterns, evolution of terminology, emotional strategies and figurative language. The choice of a specific domain makes it possible to derive relevant data notwithstanding the limited size of the corpus.
Faini, P. (2011). From War to War: Tradition and Innovation in Medical Literature. In Challenges for the 21st Century: Dilemmas, Ambiguities, Directions (pp.171-180). ROMA : Edizioni Q.
From War to War: Tradition and Innovation in Medical Literature
FAINI, Paola
2011-01-01
Abstract
To what extent do the traumatic events of wartime shape the language of texts with a high degree of technicality, such as medical texts written by subject specialists for their peers? This question is the starting point for the analysis of a mini-corpus consisting of articles from the “British Medical Journal” and the “Journal of the Canadian Medical Association”, and supplemented with extracts from selected publications of the Borden Institute (US Army Medical Department Center & School). The mini-corpus covers the period of the First and Second World Wars, and also includes a selection of articles written at the time of the Korean and Vietnam wars, as well as during the present war experience in Afghanistan. The diachronic perspective of the analysis aims to explore the “discourses of illness” in order to highlight linguistic and genre conventions (recurring “ways of putting things”, Kennedy 1992) as well as innovations: domain-specific verbs (but also their nominal and adjectival forms) and patterns, evolution of terminology, emotional strategies and figurative language. The choice of a specific domain makes it possible to derive relevant data notwithstanding the limited size of the corpus.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
