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The ideology of patient information leaflets: a diachronic study

UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL, UK, j.mcmanus{at}liverpool.ac.uk

This study explores society's attitudes towards medicine, as reflected in the language of Patient Information Leaflets (PILs), and attempts to explicate how they have changed over the last century. For this purpose, Halliday's (1985) transitivity model is employed as a method of discourse analysis in order to carry out a systematic, comparative investigation of the language of early 20th-century PILs and that of their modern equivalents. The study demonstrates how the transitivity choices in the respective samples cumulatively realize a particular `world-view', and considers the implications this has for the construal of the wider social/cultural context and the projection of particular ideologies. The analyses show significant differences in transitivity patterns between the two samples, which reflect changes in the way medicine is viewed in Western culture.

Key Words: discourse analysis • ideology • medical discourse • representation • Systemic Functional Grammar • transitivity

Discourse & Communication, Vol. 3, No. 1, 27-56 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1750481308098763


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