Magdalena Murawska Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań “Patient imaging in English medical case reports.”
ABSTRACT
The present paper addresses the way patients are depicted in English medical academic texts aimed at health professionals. It examines the linguistic choices authors make and the effect they produce. The key issue is the construction of a patient persona, by analogy with other studies in which the authorial persona has been researched. In my project, I have attempted to analyse a corpus of selected case reports in search of references to patients in order to establish the roles they are assigned. Identifying these roles would help to determine patients’ textual status, i.e. whether they function as the subjects or the objects of a medical study. The results of the analysis are discussed with reference to patient-centred approaches in medicine and to some facts concerning the history of medicine which have influenced the visibility of patients in medical literature.