This book explores the enigmatic realm of medical terminology. It investigates the nomenclature of illness, tackling words that are socially unspeakable, physically unpronounceable and empirically incomprehensible. This original study draws on a wide range of examples from clinical and non-clinical discourse from the worlds of physiological and psychiatric practice. These are worlds of bedside euphemism, physicians’ club slang and codified medical jargon. This book is about words that matter to everyone: it is about one’s shameful ‘c-word’; about a negligible ‘headache’ that dresses up as ‘cephalalgia’ and sounds instantly more serious; about many, many terms that are linguistically fascinating and culturally significant. Varella ‘reads’ the language of illness for its political and cultural significance and its sense of foreclosure in the face of institutional priorities and pragmatism. This book will be of value to anyone working in and around the fields of historical lexicology, medical discourse, health communication, health psychology.weiterlesen