Summary

The nature of the object designated by language as used in medical language is quite different from the one used in Romance language. A language such as French or Galician can be said to exist as a speech community or as a norm. The speech community is a way of classifying speakers on the basis of their competence, and the norm regulates what is considered proper use of this competence in the speech community. Medical language is primarily based on the classification of performance in particular contexts. These contexts vary widely, and it is not possible to determine a homogeneous register or genre of medical language. The variation is much more pronounced in medical language than in other specialized languages, in part due to the fact that speaking and writing about medicine ranges from technical discussions in specialized research journals to court proceedings in cases about health insurance and to communication between doctors and patients. To the extent that there is a unifying factor in these varieties, it is rather to be found at the lexical level than at the discourse level.

Medical dictionaries record the vocabulary that is specific to medicine as well as words that have special meanings in a medical context. For French, Spanish, and Italian, large monolingual medical dictionaries have been compiled. Such medical dictionaries are often reworked for other languages. In some cases, American dictionaries have served as a model, resulting especially in South America also in bilingual dictionaries. Apart from medical dictionaries, anatomical atlases also play a role in recording specialized vocabulary.

Medical vocabulary is often characterized by the application of specific word-formation processes. As the language of medicine used to be Latin, which itself had borrowed many terms from Greek, neoclassical word formation and borrowings from Latin and Greek are frequent. The special relationship that persists between Latin and modern Romance languages facilitates the sharing of such words among languages. Although much medical research is now reported on in English, the Latin-based component of the vocabulary remains important, because there is also a significant proportion of Latin and French loanwords in English. This feature of medical language also makes the formation of corresponding words in Romance minority languages such as Ladin less problematic, which in turn supports the use of these languages in communication with patients in the relevant communities.

The use of Romance languages in medical journals is a measure of the resistance to English dominance in the domain. In all major Romance language areas, we find English-only medical journals, especially among those with the greatest impact, alongside journals with a mixture or with only the Romance language. Particularly in the case of Spanish, there are also journals that publish all articles in two languages, translating them into English after acceptance.