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Chapter 1 - Medical Discourse and Sociocultural Contexts 1500–1820

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2022

By
Irma Taavitsainen ,
Jeremy J. Smith ,
Turo Hiltunen  and
Carla Suhr
Edited by
Irma Taavitsainen ,
Turo Hiltunen ,
Jeremy J. Smith  and
Carla Suhr
Irma Taavitsainen
Affiliation:
University of Helsinki
Turo Hiltunen
Affiliation:
University of Helsinki
Jeremy J. Smith
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
Carla Suhr
Affiliation:
University of Helsinki
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Summary

This introductory chapter discusses the contents of the volume with its focus on genres and text traditions of medical discourse in a diachronic perspective. Variability of medical language with its conventions and traditions of writing is a leading theme in several chapters and surfaces in others as well. The social and cultural contexts of production and use as well as meaning-making processes of written texts as communicative events receive attention. All contributions take context in textual production and use into account. Another point of emphasis is variation in discourse forms in texts that were removed from the original settings and repurposed for new readerships. Texts circulating in Britain are at centre stage, but medical discourses reflecting common ideological assumptions had a broad currency and English writers shared profoundly in the pan-European medical culture.

Keywords

medical discoursegenretraditiondiachrony
Type
Chapter
Information
Genre in English Medical Writing, 1500–1820
Sociocultural Contexts of Production and Use
 , pp. 1 - 12
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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