Tropes in the professional speech of medics (using metaphors as an example)



This article discusses the features of the use of tropes, in particular — metaphors, in the professional speech of medics. The paper considers the main functions of tropes, which determine their use in professional communication. This is, on the one hand, the codification of definitions from the terminological subject area, on the other — the creation of greater expressiveness in speaking situations, which allows you to show the verbal competence of communicants.

Keywords: tropes, metaphor, professional communication, medicine, features of linguistic forms.

В данной статье рассматриваются особенности использования тропов, в частности — метафор, в профессиональной речи медиков. В работе рассмотрены основные функции тропов, обуславливающие их использование в профессиональной коммуникации. Это, с одной стороны, кодификация дефиниций из терминологической предметной области, с другой — создание большей выразительности в ситуациях говорения, что позволяет проявить речевые компетенции коммуникантов.

Ключевые слова: тропы, метафора, профессиональная коммуникация, медицина, особенности языковых форм.

As defined by the Literary Encyclopedic Dictionary, tropes are understood as a transformation of language units, comprising the transfer of a traditional name to another subject area on various grounds. Distinctions are drawn between metonymy and metaphor, for instance, based on contiguity or similarity.

In the field of linguistics, tropes are defined in accordance with their stereotypical and figurative meanings. In its initial function, metaphor is employed to create a vivid image, thereby depriving the reader or listener of the automaticity that would otherwise characterize their perception and facilitating the process of understanding. This is due to the fact that metaphor appeals to the visual-imaginative type of thinking. However, with the evolution of language, some words whose meanings were based on transference have lost their vividness. This phenomenon is referred to as erased imagery. Sentences such as «The sun has gone away» or «Time is passing by» are not perceived as vivid figurative utterances by speakers. Consequently, the Dictionary of Linguistic Terms classifies metaphors into three categories [2]:

1. those who have lost figurativeness;
2. those that retain figurativeness;
3. authorial, individual-stylistic metaphors.

Modern linguistics bases its understanding of metaphor and tropes in general as means that create an aesthetic effect of expressiveness primarily in artistic and publicistic speech. Practice shows, however, that this also applies to everyday, professional and, to some extent, scientific speech.

For example, the professional vocabulary of doctors, especially in the form of oral professional communication, is characterized by a wide use of tropes, especially metaphors. We will not contrast metaphors with terms for the sole reason that terms are characterized by maximum unambiguity and clarity of interpretation when translated into other languages. This reluctance is due to the fact that in medicine there is a large number of terms that have arisen precisely on the basis of metaphorical transfer. For example, any tenuous moviegoer knows that doctors «fight for the life» of a patient and, if the patient dies, they say «we have lost him». Both the first and the second statement are based on a metaphor, because the fight for somebody’s life is just doctors fulfilling their professional duties while treating the patient. And with the patient's death, there is no real loss. When pronouncing death, the doctor uses the word death in its terminological meaning — as a lethal result and the end of all processes of vital activity.

However, this does not mean that there are no concepts embodied by metaphor. They do exist and, according to Dudetskaya S. G., semantically they produce a new semantic unit, and semiologically they participate in the process of recoding the common vocabulary. Studies of thinking processes have shown that in the process of cognition a person adapts language to the adequate representation of objective reality with the help of metaphorization.

Besides the fact that metaphor generates a compact nomination of an object in the form of a term, it also offers a certain interpretation of this object, providing its internal characterization at the external level. Therefore, terms from medicine such as burning pain, cluster headache, glue ear, whiplash injury, or blind gut, feed the imagination of the native speaker without ceasing to be medical diagnostic terms.

Professor of the Department of Foreign Languages and Professional Communication of the Kursk State University O. S. Zubkova is one of the most prominent Russian specialists in the field of sociolinguistics and metaphorization of professional language. In her numerous publications on this topic, the author notes, among other things, in connection with the professional language of medical professionals, that in their spontaneous speech «a significant number of metaphors, peculiar periphrases, when a necessary word is replaced by a neologism [3]. For example: fromagère (cheese-maker — a nurse in traumatology), pink elephants (delusion by alcohol or drug delirium), lolo (milk, from children's language, — a woman in the last trimester of pregnancy), purée (purée — a patient in a state of deep anesthesia), vegetable (a patient who has lost non-vegetative functions like language and cognition)».

Summarizing the content of the article, we would like to note the high frequency of metaphors in the professional language of doctors and other medical professionals. Metaphors are used both to codify specialized knowledge from the field of terminology and to create greater expressiveness in speaking situations and to demonstrate high linguistic competence of communicators.

References:

1. Дудецкая С. Г. Метафоризация как способ терминообразования: автореферат дис. на соискание учен.степ. кандидата филологических наук /Самарский гос. пед.ун-т — Самара, 2007. — 23c.
2. Жеребило Т. В. Словарь лингвистических терминов. Назрань: Пилигрим, 2010. — 488 c.
3. Зубкова О. С., 2011, Метафора в профессиональной семиотике: Монография, Курск: Издательство КГУ.
4. Литературный энциклопедический словарь /Под общ. ред. В. М. Кожевникова, П. А. Николаева. Редкол.: Л. Г. Андреев, Н. И. Балашов, А. Г. Бочаров и др..—М.: Сов. энциклопедия, 1987.—752 с.