32.888, Review: English; Discourse Analysis; Historical Linguistics; Pragmatics; Sociolinguistics: Taavitsainen, Hiltunen (2019)

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Subject: 32.888, Review: English; Discourse Analysis; Historical Linguistics; Pragmatics; Sociolinguistics: Taavitsainen, Hiltunen (2019)

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Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2021 22:03:13
From: Richard Whitt [richard.whitt at nottingham.ac.uk]
Subject: Late Modern English Medical Texts

 
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EDITOR: Irma  Taavitsainen
EDITOR: Turo  Hiltunen
TITLE: Late Modern English Medical Texts
SUBTITLE: Writing medicine in the eighteenth century. Including the LMEMT Corpus
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2019

REVIEWER: Richard J. Whitt, University of Nottingham

SUMMARY

The recent release of the Late Modern English Medical Texts Corpus (LMEMT) by
the Scientific Thought-Styles Project at The University of Helsinki concludes
over two decades of research, having resulted in two previous corpora of
medical writing in the history of English -- the Middle English Medical Texts
Corpus (2005, MEMT) and the Early Modern English Medical Texts Corpus (2010,
EMEMT) -- as well as numerous other publications. Thanks to the release of
LMEMT, detailed and systematic corpus linguistic investigations of
scientific/medical writing in English from the fourteenth through the
eighteenth centuries are now possible. The present volume, which accompanies
the release of this corpus, presents a number of contributions that place
medical writing in its sociohistorical context and demonstrate how both
qualitative and quantitative aspects of linguistic analysis can be employed in
the study of the history of medical writing in English.

The volume opens with Turo Hiltunen and Irma Taavitsainen's ''Towards new
knowledge: The corpus of Late Modern English Medical Texts'', which shows how
the corpus coverage provided by LMEMT provides a natural continuation from
that of MEMT and EMEMT: insofar as is possible, there is a continuity of
corpus structure and text categories. At the same time, developments in the
field of medicine and the emergence of new genres and categories have also
been accounted for. Hiltunen and Taavitsainen also discuss the issue of
representativeness in corpus linguistics and see the LMEMT as a
'neat-and-tidy' corpus, one in which much thought and effort has been expended
on producing clean text extracts that represent both temporal and thematic
coverage of medical writing in the eighteenth century. A number of
visualisations are provided to represent both the size of each text in the
corpus (within each respective text category), as well as their temporal
distribution across the century. The chapter then concludes with an overview
of the other chapters contained in the volume.

Chapter 2, ''Sociohistorical and cultural context of Late Modern English
Medical Texts'' by Irma Taavitsainen, Peter Murray Jones and Turo Hiltunen,
focuses on many of the language-external developments in medicine of the time
that prove pivotal in shaping language usage of the period. The sociopragmatic
approach, employing an interdisciplinary endeavor between linguistic
pragmatics, culture, history, science, and medicine, is a clear driver in the
principles surrounding the compilation of LMEMT, and of the Scientific
Thought-Styles Project more broadly. Particular to the eighteenth century,
there is a discussion of changes in medical practice and writing, with the
emergence of scholarly publications like the Edinburgh Medical Journal and the
increased emphasis placed on statistics in research. The vernacularisation of
medical writing continues apace from the early modern period, although some
use of Latin in medical writing remains (as it does to the present day). Some
attention is paid to the authors and audiences of medical texts in the
eighteenth century, and a discussion of the increasing influence of the Royal
Society and polite society on style, with a concomitant decreasing influence
of earlier models such as astrology and humoral theory, concludes the chapter.

The first detailed linguistic investigation of the corpus is provided in
Chapter 3, ''Topics of eighteenth-century medical writing with triangulation
of methods: LMEMT and the underlying reality'' by Irma Taavitsainen, Gerold
Schneider, and Peter Murray Jones. The triangulation is one of history,
linguistics, and computing. The chapter opens with a discussion of the
historical background surrounding eighteenth-century medical writing,
specifically on how novel innovations were occurring at the same time as
earlier ways of thinking about medicine lingered on. To see how this is
realised linguistically in the texts, the authors decide on topic modeling,
specifically using Kernel Density Estimates on both the EMEMT and LMEMT,
evaluating which topics are prominent in both corpora, as well as common
topics across the corpora. This is complemented by a qualitative assessment of
both topics and corpus categories. A discussion of how both qualitative and
quantitative methods can be synthesised concludes the discussion.

David Gentilcore discusses ''Regimens and their readers in eighteenth-century
England'' in Chapter 4, with a focus on the lingering popularity of health
regimens during the eighteenth century despite a rise in iatromedicine
(chemical medicine) and mechanistic views of human physiology and health.
Gentilcore notes a shift in focus from preventative measures (grounded in
humoral theory) to actual treatments in health regimens during the period, and
there is also an ever-expanding access to such texts due to the bourgeoisie
lifestyle. Particular attention is paid to authors George Cheyne and William
Buchan. The focus of this chapter is exclusively historical and there is no
analysis of linguistic or discursive features (Gentilcore being an historian
not a linguist).

Attention shifts to ''Medical case reports in Late Modern English'' in Chapter
5. This contribution by Anu Lehto and Irma Taavitsainen views the medical case
report -- which dates back to medieval medical writing -- as a form of
narrative, and the Labovian model of narrative (Labov & Waletzky 1997 [1967])
provides the analytic framework alongside models of point-of-view posited by
Fowler (1986) and Simpson (1993). Lehto and Taavitsainen show that the medical
case reports of the eighteenth century exhibit a conventional narrative
structure overall, although they are sometimes interspersed with other genres
of medical writing such as experimental reports or advertisements. Narrative
point-of-view is shown by an analysis of personal pronouns and discussion of
involved vs. detached writing styles, and it is noted that such usage is
dependent not only on changes in medical culture, but also the envisaged
audience of a text. The emergence of ego-documents and patient tales is also
given some attention.

Alun Withey takes up the issue of ''Household medicine and recipe culture in
eighteenth-century Britain''. Similar to Gentilcore's discussion in Chapter 4,
Withey's contribution is exclusively historical. He focuses on the domestic
sphere as a centre of medical knowledge and illustrates how recipes and recipe
collections were often passed down from generation to generation within a
family. The increasing role of literacy and medical print, particularly
popular advertising is given some attention. New innovations in medicine, as
well as lingering older practices and beliefs (such as humoral theory and
astrology) are also discussed.

Chapter 7's focus is on ''Polite society language practices: Letters to the
Editor in The Gentleman's Magazine''. This contribution by Irma Taavitsainen
focuses on the linguistic realisation of politeness in emergent lay medical
discourse (politeness as generally understood during the eighteenth century).
This is a purely qualitative study, and Taavitsaien examines compliments,
requests, and acts of thanking in her investigation. She notes how some acts
that are overtly presented as one form of politeness (like expressions of
gratitude) actually imply another form altogether (like a request). Some
attention is also devoted to how impoliteness could be couched in overtly
polite discourse.

In Chapter 8, Anu Lehto examines ''Changing portrayals of medicine and
patients in eighteenth-century medical writing: Lexical bundles in Public
Health, Methods, and case studies''. Lehto's focus here is on corpus
linguistic methods of analysing lexical bundles in three different domains of
medical writing, and she begins her discussion with a review of the notion of
lexical bundles and discusses their applicability to historical texts and
LMEMT. Her focus is on the most frequent referential bundles, textual bundles,
and stance expressions. She provides an ample amount of quantitative data for
the domains of public health, methods, and case studies, and notes that there
is a varying prevalence of narrative discourse used throughout the period.

Irma Taavitsainen contributes a discussion on ''Professional and lay medical
texts in the eighteenth century: A linguistic stylistic assessment'' in
Chapter 9. Taavitsainen explores the different stylistic features of texts
aimed at a professional audience on the one hand, and a lay audience on the
other hand, by analysing a subcorpus of LMEMT (texts on specific subjects,
health guides, periodicals, and Gentleman's Magazine). She homes in on
discussions of various topics that were popular during the eighteenth century,
such as the emergence of inoculation, sea bathing, and various uses of water.
It is shown how texts aimed at a professional audience exhibit clear
rhetorical strategies of argumentation and use of statistics as evidence
(something new during this period). Lingering practices of extended quotation
and citation of other sources presented themselves as well. The lay texts, on
the other hand, often exhibited a high usage of 2nd person direct address, a
fairy tale style of writing and other methods of storytelling aimed at
amusement, a high degree of sentimental expressions, and even some xenophobic
and nationalistic discursive strategies. These features are all placed in
their sociohistorical context, and Taavitsainen notes that despite these
distinctive features, there were quite a bit of overlapping stylistic features
as well.

The final linguistic investigation is provided by Jukka Tyrkkö in Chapter 10,
''The symptom comes of age: Sign semantics from Late Middle to Late Modern
English''. Tyrkkö's focus here is on 'signifier terms' used to indicate what
is now known as the symptom (terms such as mark, token, sign, accident,
prognostic, indication, and of course, symptom) in a number of corpora (MEMT,
EMEMT, LMEMT), as well as in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and
Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE). The behaviour of these terms in
different genres of text, as well as the specific developments undergone by
individual signifier terms, is explored in detail. There is a heavy
quantitative angle complemented by qualitative analysis in light of the
sociohistorical context (vernacularisation of medical writing, professional
vs. lay audiences), and Tyrkkö concludes by exploring how the term ‘symptom’ 
ultimately became the word of choice we now use today.

Chapter 11, ''LMEMT Categories'', provides a systematic discussion of each of
the corpus categories found in LMEMT. Each subsection (written by a different
member of the compilation team) contains a discussion of the chronological
distribution of texts, an overview of the texts featured in the corpus,
details of specific authors and intended audiences, prevalent discourse forms
and genres (including common linguistic and rhetorical features), original
compositions vs. translated texts, and an historical overview of continuity in
beliefs and practices vs. new trends that emerged during the eighteenth
century. The subsections of the corpus are general treatises and textbooks
(discussed by Irma Taavitsainen); specific treatises devoted to diseases
(Maura Ratia), methods (Anu Lehto & Irma Taavitsainen), therapeutic substances
(Carla Suhr & Irma Taavitsainen), and midwifery (Päivi Pahta); medical recipe
collections (Anu Lehto & Irma Taavitsainen); regimens (Carla Suhr); surgical
and anatomical texts (Jukka Tyrkkö); public health (Anu Lehto); scientific
periodicals: the Philosophical Transactions and the Edinburgh Medical Journal
(Turo Hiltunen); and general periodicals: The Gentleman's Magazine (Irma
Taavitsainen).

The final chapter (Chapter 12) is the ''Manual to the LMEMT corpus'' by Turo
Hiltunen and Jukka Tyrkkö. Here, Hiltunen and Tyrkkö discuss how exactly texts
for the corpus were procured and in what formats they are provided, i.e. plain
text (with UTF-8 encoding) and XML (TEI compliant). They then provide a
helpful discussion of XML and focus on what particular tags were used in the
corpus, both in the metadata of each file and in the text itself.

Besides these chapters, a catalogue containing bibliographical information of
each individual text in the corpus is provided alongside your standard
reference sections (primary and secondary sources) and index. The LMEMT corpus
itself, provided on CD-ROM, contains the 'Digital Edition' of the corpus (XML
encoded) alongside the 'Unannotated Version' (plain text format). A
spreadsheet containing the list of texts in the corpus is also provided, as is
a digital version of the corpus manual (Chapter 12 in the volume).

EVALUATION

The LMEMT corpus is certainly a welcome addition to the resources available
for historical pragmatic investigations, particularly in the arena of
scientific/medical writing in the history of English. The categorisation of
texts is sensible, and the corpus itself is nicely curated and certainly
''neat and tidy'', insofar as much care has been taken to provide clean copies
of the text that are free of digital ''noise'' (such as the presence of
nonsense characters that can appear during the digitisation process). The XML
files are encoded to an appropriate degree of specificity. LMEMT makes a
perfect complement to the extant MEMT and EMEMT corpora, allowing for the
systematic study of four centuries of medical writing -- four centuries in
which numerous sociocultural and historical developments led to profound
changes in the discipline. The subcategorisation of texts also allows for more
specific investigations of particular fields of medicine (such as surgery),
and the resources provided by the corpus and accompanying volume serve as
handy references that can point the user towards materials above and beyond
the corpus itself. 

The contributions to the LMEMT volume provide a nice showcase of the possible
range of investigations facilitated by the corpus. Some papers take a purely
qualitative angle, while others marry qualitative textual analysis with
quantitative statistical insights. A particular standout here is Chapter 3 (by
Taavitsainen, Schneider, and Jones), in which the results of topic modeling
are quite seamlessly placed in their sociohistorical context via more
qualitative textual analysis. Lehto and Taavitsainen's contribution on medical
case reports and narratology (Chapter 5), on the other hand, provides an
alternative picture of how the corpus can provide source material for a purely
qualitative analysis, especially one in which the topic may preclude
straightforward corpus searches from being carried out. Chapter 11 provides
harmonized discussions of the particulars associated with each of LMEMT's
textual categories, and the inclusion of the manual (Chapter 12) in the volume
is a helpful guide on the more technical aspects of the corpus' composition
and use.

There are, unfortunately, a few weaknesses that detract from the volume's
efficacy as a companion to an excellent resource. The most glaring one is the
ordering of chapters in the volume. A detailed discussion of the exact
structure of the corpus in terms of textual categories does not come until
Chapter 11; yet the preceding chapters proceed under the assumption that the
reader is aware of the overall corpus structure and the particulars of each
subcategory (regimens, public health, methods, etc.). Some attention is given
to this in Chapter 1, although it is insufficient to truly appreciate the
results of linguistic investigations that follow. The editors would have done
well to choose a structure similar to the one of the volume that accompanied
EMEMT in 2010: historical background to the corpus, corpus description,
specific studies. As things stand, the reader would be wise to skip
immediately from Chapter 2 to Chapter 11, and then return to Chapter 3. In
addition, the historical chapters by Gentilcore (Chapter 4) and Withey
(Chapter 6) provide essential background knowledge to the textual categories
under discussion, but they are interspersed among linguistic investigations
and should probably have been presented alongside one another (but after a
detailed presentation of the individual textual categories).

One piece of critical information curiously absent from the corpus description
is that of word counts, both in terms of textual categories and individual
text files. Chapter 1 provides visualisations that give a general idea of the
size of texts, but this lacks specificity when it comes to providing
qualitative results in one's own studies, and such information is necessary
for running statistical texts. The manual (Chapter 12) promises that such
information is available in the Excel file that accompanies the corpus, but
this is not the case (at least in the version that came with my copy of the
volume and CD-ROM). This information is also not provided in the metadata of
the XML-encoded files, as also seems to be suggested in the manual. In the
EMEMT volume, some of this information was at least provided in the corpus
description (Chapter 11 in the LMEMT volume), and it would have been nice if
that had been the case here as well.

My final critique does not necessarily involve the compilers of LMEMT and
editors of the accompanying volume, who have done an excellent job putting
this corpus together and demonstrating how it can be used effectively; rather,
the way it which the corpus is distributed could prove problematic in the near
future. The use of CD-ROM is, in my opinion, quickly becoming outdated, seeing
that some computers (or at least laptops) no longer even provide a CD-ROM
drive. Such a mechanism certainly made sense during the release of MEMT in
2005 and even EMEMT in 2010, but it is not optimal nowadays. The corpus
compilers, and indeed the publisher, need to urgently investigate more
state-of-the-art mechanisms of delivering these corpora to the end user
(perhaps online via license keys?). It would also be helpful to make these
corpora available at an institutional level so they could be used more readily
in teaching and student-led research projects. Aside from the risk of damage
or loss, one physical copy of a CD-ROM on a library shelf is insufficient for
such purposes.

These critiques aside, the LMEMT corpus achieves what the compilers intended:
it presents a excellent sampling of eighteenth-century medical writing and,
alongside MEMT and EMEMT, provides continuity of corpus coverage from the
medieval through the late modern English periods of medical writing in
English. It is not only an indispensable resource for those interested in
historical pragmatics and domain-specific language usage in the history of the
English language, but also those interested in the history of medicine. The
studies presented in the volume showcase the diverse range of topics and
methodologies that can be pursued with what is relatively a small, yet
''neat-and-tidy'' corpus; the papers also make clear there is much left to be
explored.

REFERENCES

Fowler, Roger. 1986. Linguistic Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Labov, William and Joshua Waletzky. 1997 [1967]. Narrative analysis: Oral
versions of personal experience. Journal of Narrative and Life History 7.
3-38.

Simpson, Paul. 1993. Language, Ideology, and Point of View. London: Routledge.

Taavitsainen, Irma and Päivi Pahta. Eds. 2010. Early Modern English Medical
Texts. Includes CD-ROM of Early Modern English Medical Texts Corpus (compiled
by Irma Taavitsainen, Päivi Pahta, Turo Hiltunen, Martti Mäkinen, Ville
Marttila, Maura Ratia, Carla Suhr, and Jukka Tyrkkö). Amsterdam/Philadelphia:
John Benjamins.

Taavitsainen, Irma, Päivi Pahta, and Martti Mäkinen. 2005. Middle English
Medical Texts. CD-ROM. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Richard J. Whitt is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics in the School of
English at The University of Nottingham. His current research focuses on an
historical sociopragmatic investigation into the first three centuries of
vernacular medical writing in English (1500-1800), particularly in the fields
of midwifery and women's medicine. He has previously worked on compiling
German-language historical corpora (GerManC, GeMi) and evidentiality in
English and German.





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