Abstract

This volume investigates the features and challenges of medical discourse between medical professionals as well as with patients and in the media. Based on corpus-driven studies, it includes a wide variety of approaches including cognitive, corpus and diachronic linguistics. Each chapter examines a different aspect of medical communication, including the use of metaphor referring to cancer, the importance of ethics in medical documents addressed to patients and the suitability of popular science articles for medical students. The book also features linguistic, textual and discourse-focused analysis of some fundamental medical genres. By combining sociological and linguistic research applied to the medical context, it illustrates how linguists and translation specialists can build bridges between health professionals and their patients.

This excellent anthology on various dimensions of medical discourse is informative and well organized. The 12 authors of the 9 chapters offer novel insights into this significant aspect of professional-lay person communication. It is a book that should be on the shelves of everyone involved in medical education.

This book adds to the coming of age of interdisciplinarity in specialized discourse and translation research, with ground-breaking contributions that touch upon genre-oriented issues in medical texts. The overriding idea one should keep in mind after reading it is that no discourse – not even scientific discourse – is free from all textual and ideological subtexts, and this implies that ethics or the persuasive use of metaphoric language should be considered as an integral part of real-life medical discourse.

This volume sheds light on the understanding of cognitive, textual, linguistic, ethical and discourse-specific features operating in medical discourse in professional, academic, and popular settings. It is a most welcome and useful book that provides an excellent overview of a wide variety of topics. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone interested in the language of medicine and in medical communication.

The studies presented in this volume provide remarkable arguments to encourage
further interaction between humanistic and technical knowledge. Furthermore, the volume substantiates the importance of understanding how language works to promote successful medical communication.

The book shows the amazing diversity of medical discourse. We learn from it that neither medicine nor linguistics should sit aloof in their ivory towers – bridges can be built between them. Both can be brought down to earth and they can serve each other, to the benefit of those who need help the most.

Pilar Ordóñez-López is Lecturer in the Department of Translation and Communication at Universitat Jaume I in Castellón, Spain, and member of the IULMA (Instituto Interuniversitario de Lenguas Modernas Aplicadas). Her research interests include the history of translation, translation theory, corpus-based translation studies and legal translation.

Nuria Edo-Marzá is Lecturer in the Department of English Studies at Universitat Jaume I in Castellón, Spain, and member of the IULMA (Instituto Interuniversitario de Lenguas Modernas Aplicadas). Her research interests include specialised languages (mainly those of health, science and technology and tourism), specialised lexicography, corpus linguistics and terminology.

Medical Discourse in Professional, Academic and Popular Settings is a very interesting read and not only is it very researcher-friendly, but it is also very accessible and will be appreciated by others working in the field of healthcare communication, including EMP trainers and those without a research background.