Medical Ethnolinguistics

Human Studies, 1995

This paper gives a selective overview of studies in 'medical ethnomethodology'. It starts with the 1967 contributions by Garfinkel and Sudnow, which focus on medical action as accountable Then it discusses the many CA-inspired studies of doctor-patient interaction published during the 1980s. Finally, it points to scattered studies that suggest several ways in which this latter approach can be deepened and enlarged. In this .way, it formulates the contours of a program for ethnomethodological studies in the medical field. Ethnomethodological studies have been done in many different 'fields', including the medical one. The issue whether a 'field specific' ethnomethodology can make sense has not been raised, as far as I know, but field specializations can be seen to exist to a certain extent among ethno/CA researchers. Therefore, it may be useful to review ethnomethodological studies in a specific 'field' oforganised action, as I do in the present paper for the medical field. Like any ethnomethodology, a medical one takes of from the ideas formulated in Harold Garfinkel's Studies, as in the first lines: In doing sociology, lay and professional, every reference to the "real world," even where the reference is to physical or biological events, is a reference to the organized activities of everyday life .... Ethnomethodological studies analyze everyday activities as members' methods for making those same activities visibly-rational-and-reportable-for-all-practical-purposes, i.e., "accountable," as organizations of commonplace everyday activities. Garfinkel, 1967: VII All 'events', including medical ones, refer to 'the organized activities of everyday life', i.e., to accountable action. What may be considered 'medical' is, for members, a practical problem that is often decided as a matter of course, but that sometimes leads to in-*Revised draft of a paper read at the Conference: "Ethnomethodology: Twenty FiveYears Later",

2017

This chapter reviews the contributions of ethnoscience to medical anthropology, focusing on the study of illness beliefs and practices across cultures. The chapter‟s approach is broadly historical. It starts by describing the early cognitive anthropological research on illness that explored taxonomies of illness concepts, and the features of those concepts as linguistic phenomena. It then surveys more recent work on prototypes and schema theory, drawing connections to ethnomedical beliefs and practices. Finally, it discusses the modern concept of “explanatory models,” and relates it to issues in cognitive anthropology. Since “ethnoscience” is a concept that emerged from, and has been explored within cognitive anthropology, this chapter foregrounds the cognitive science agendas that intersect with the research and practical concerns of medical anthropology, and does not attempt to provide a widely comprehensive overview of either ethnoscience or medical anthropology.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological …, 2006

Medical anthropology is concerned with both the causes and consequences of human sickness, and its various theoretical orientations can be grouped into four major approaches: medical ecology, critical medical anthropology, interpretative medical anthropology, and ethnomedicine. While medical anthropologists of all theoretical persuasions have examined why people get sick, the analysis and understanding of patterns of treatment has been largely confined to ethnomedicine. Historically, more emphasis has been placed on the personalistic or supernatural aspects of ethnomedical systems than on naturalistic or empirical components. While this focus has produced valuable insights into the role of ritual and belief in healing, it has led to the impression that traditional medicine is primarily symbolic. Moreover, it ignores the theoretical bases of traditional healing strategies and the practical means by which most of the world heals itself, namely plants. Recently there has been more interest in the empirical character of ethnomedical systems, and in this paper we consider the role that medical ethnobiology has played in this shift of focus. We begin with a brief history of medical anthropology to illuminate why naturalistic medicine was neglected for so long. We then review exemplary research in two areas of medical ethnobiology -ethnophysiology and medical ethnobotany -that address the study of naturalistic aspects of medical systems. We conclude with suggestions for future research at the interface between medical ethnobiology and medical anthropology that will contribute to both fields.

Medical anthropology is the study of medical phenomena as social and cultural phenomena. "Medical" is an imperious adjective that seems to suggest that medical anthropology is interested in things, thoughts, and practices related to medical science or that it is a branch of anthropology in the service of medicine. It is not; rather, for many medical anthropologists, the opposite applies. "Medical" refers broadly to anything related to health, well-being, sickness, and the treatment of ill-health.

Medical anthropology, 2023

Medical anthropology is an interdisciplinary field which studies "human health and disease, health care systems, and bio-cultural adaptation". The definition has the following components; The definition provided by Schrimshaw (2000), McElroy (1993) and many others focuses on three key aspects namely:

Academia Letters, 2021

and was approved by institutional review board oversight for research with human participants. All participants received informed consent and participant identifying data has been concealed. 8 Shaman is a term used by the principal informant in this community used to describe herself, along with the term Daykeeper or Calendar Keeper. She is ethnically Maya. 9 Precise locations, names, and other identifiers have been redacted to protect the identity of this community.

Latin American voices, 2019

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.

Field Methods, 2005

The authors provide a summary of methods that they have used in their long-term interdisciplinary research that incorporates a series of semi-independent, complementary methods of data collection derived from medical anthropology, ethnobotany, and ethnopharmacology. Discussion begins with the first step in research with human subjects, the acquisition of prior informed consent; they then outline the theoretical postulates underlying their methodological approach. Medical anthropological methods include building databases of ethnoanatomical terms and named health conditions. Ethnoepidemiological surveys can then establish the perceived frequency and cultural salience of the health problems named in the databases. The ethnomedical and ethnobotanical data provide an ethnopharmacopoeia of medicinal plants that become the basis for documentation of the details of selection and preparation and administration or ethnoformulary. The results of these integrated disciplinary studies can be re...

In: The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture, edited by Farzad Sharifian, 66-83., 2015

Ethnopragmatics starts with the objective of understanding speech practices in terms of the values and social models of cultural insiders. It applies analytical methods based on cross-linguistic semantics in order to access and represent cultural meanings (Wierzbicka 1991[2003]; Goddard/Wierzbicka eds. 2004; Goddard ed. 2006). The chapter explains and positions these characteristics of ethnopragmatics with respect to similar and rival approaches. Ethnopragmatics is anti-Anglocentric, identifying as a critical issue the need to avoid English-specific terminology and English-specific concepts both in cultural description and in theory formulation. Relatedly, an important aspect of the ethnopragmatic project to de-naturalise the pragmatics of Anglo English. The chapter illustrates how cultural scripts and semantic explications framed in simple translatable words can be used to faithfully capture cultural-internal understandings of meaning, while at the same time allowing these to be accessible to cultural outsiders. Ethnopragmatics can be applied at different levels of description, from high-level cultural scripts associated with cultural keywords, to interactional scripts for communicative style, right down to scripts for linguistic routines and other word usage phenomena. It can illuminate connections between cultural values and beliefs, on the one hand, and a wide range of features of language structure and use, such as diminutives and honorifics, systems of address and reference, discourse particles, and of course, language-specific word meanings of diverse kinds. Ethnopragmatic sketches are provided for Chinese and Anglo English. As for future directions, the chapter looks to practical applications of ethnopragmatics in intercultural education and in language documentation.