The vocabulary of medical English : a corpus-based study

The question of characterizing academic vocabulary has often been framed in a context that is purely determined by questions of language teaching. The aim in such approaches is to come up with a list of words for learners of English for Special Purposes. This book approaches this question from a more general, empirical perspective, focusing on medical vocabulary. Its main contention is that the characterization of medical vocabulary is much more complex than is suggested by a simple list. In a list, a threshold determines the borderline on a one-dimensional scale between what counts as medical vocabulary and what fails to qualify as such. In analysing how such lists have been produced and how the cut-off point has been determined, the book shows a number of factors that have to be taken into account. It uses a comparison of two corpora to demonstrate the extent to which text type determines the outcome of frequency calculations. On the basis of such observations, it argues for a new methodology for the calculation of the degree of medicalness of lexemes. Table of Contents 6 List of Figures 8 List of Tables 10 Acknowledgements 12 1 Introduction: Defining Medical English 14 2 Determining the Vocabulary of Medical English 24 3 Methodological Considerations 54 4 An Alternative Corpus: The Wikipedia-Based Medical Corpus 90 Conclusion 122 Appendix 1 128 Appendix 2 130 Appendix 3 162 Bibliography 180 Author Index 190 Subject Index 194