2. Medical Texts
Medical (adjective) of, relating to, or concerned
with physicians or the practice of medicine.
The variety of writings in the medical profession is
large, ranging from a single one-page information
sheet to a research paper containing multiple
pages.
According to Romich (2001), “studying medical
terminology is like learning a new language”.
3. Lexical Features of Medical Texts
1- Vocabulary of classical (Greek and Latin) origin.
from Greek: e.g. phleb-, phlebo- (i.e. phlebitis,
phlebotrombosis); from Latin: e.g. ven-, veno- (i.e.
venesection, venoatrial).
2- Eponymy is considered to be the highest level of
acknowledgment in science. Eponyms perform the
function of honouring a scientist, an inventor or a
prominent physician who played a major role in describing
the disease (e.g. Down syndrome, Parkinson’s disease,
Alzheimer’s disease).
4. Lexical Features of Medical Texts
3- Shortness also characterizes medical language.
It is used in order to express several concepts in the
shortest lexical and syntactic form, e.g. urinalysis (i.e.
urinoanalysis), contraception (i.e. contraconception);
acronyms, e.g. HIV (human immunodeficiency
virus)/AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) –
HCV (hepatitis C virus) SARS – severe acute respiratory
syndrome).
Other means of condensing medical terminology are
abbreviations e.g. CV (cardiovascular), Fld (fluid) and
stacked noun phrases e.g. body mass index (BMI).
5. Lexical Features of Medical Texts
4- Vocabulary in ML is characterized by
monoreferentiality.
This implies that in medical language there is only one
word for a specific meaning and concept. The term
cannot be suitably replaced by a synonym.
6. Lexical Features of Medical Texts
5- Each word can be referred to its concept/ meaning
immediately through the analysis of its form thus
leading to the phenomena of precision and
transparency.
In general, the prefix or root word will refer to the body
part in question, and the suffix refers to a procedure,
condition, or disease of that body part.
7. Lexical Features of Medical Texts
e.g. the word hyperglycaemia can be divided into the
following parts, e.g. hyper٠glyc٠aemia. The prefix is
hyper-, the root is -glic-, and the suffix is -aemia.
-aemia is the suffix, meaning blood condition; hyper- is
the prefix, meaning excessive; and -glic- is the root
meaning sugar. By putting these components together, it
becomes apparent that hyperglycaemia is a blood
condition of excessive sugar.
8. Syntactic Features of Medical Texts
English medical texts are written in a narrative tone;
they consist of compound and complex sentences
with embedded adjective phrases describing the
patients or their state,
e.g.:
The patient is a 50-year-old white female with known
history of asthma since infancy, possible environmental
allergies, who presented with progressive wheezing and
respiratory distress for the past two days.
9. Syntactic Features of Medical
Texts
Nominalization is another syntactic phenomenon used
in specialized texts. This process consists in using a
noun instead of a verb in order to express concepts
related to actions and practices, e.g. diagnosis (instead
of to diagnose).
On admission the patient was alert, neatly dressed and
cooperative. Her mood was depressed and her affect
was blunted.
Physical examination at the time of admission revealed
a thin, pleasant female in mild respiratory distress.
10. Syntactic Features of Medical Texts
Expressive conciseness and pre-modification are other
linguistic tools which make the sentence more condensed at a
syntactic level.
In specialized texts the use of relative clauses is avoided
for the sake of economy and simplicity of the syntactic
structure.
Nouns modified by relative clauses: e.g. a blood donor (a
person who donates blood), e.g. laboratory equipment
(equipment which is used in a laboratory)
A combination of passive voice and for + gerund: e.g.
crisis intervention techniques (techniques which are used for
intervening in a crisis)
11. Syntactic Features of Medical Texts
Another device for simplifying a relative clause is the
omission of auxiliary when the clause has a passive
form, as in the following example: Patients assigned to
the combination-therapy group also received
irinotecan… (Patients that were assigned to the
combination-therapy also received irinotecan…)
The use of the prefix un- before a past participle in
adjectival position permits the omission of the relative
clause in the negative form. For instance: The unwanted
liquid was thrown away (the liquid which was not wanted
was thrown away)
12. References:
Rosita Maglie. (2009). Understanding the
Language of Medicine.
Paulina Pietrzak. (2015). Stylistic aspects of
English and Polish medical records. Implications
for translation. The Journal of Specialised
Translation. University of Łódź, Poland.
https://examples.yourdictionary.com/reference/exa
mples/medical-suffix-meanings.html
