The Stylistics of Professional Discourse

The volume proposes a stylistics perspective to investigate the discourse of professional communities. It provides an overview of the evolving field of stylistics and its potential for analysing texts, then goes on to apply these theoretical and methodological tools to three specific communities: healthcare, law and education.

Why are doctors’ prescriptions illegible and why is the language of the law considered impenetrable to outsiders? Need they be so? Is it more difficult for non-native speakers of English than native speakers to access the discourse of professions such as law and medicine? These are some of the questions covered by this book which uses the lens of stylistics to shed light on how the discourse of professional communities is used not just to convey meanings, but also to construct identity and demark membership. The volume focuses on the three domains of healthcare, law and education, as well as on the language of the new technologies, with the aim of showing how a knowledge of stylistics can provide the key for appropriate and acceptable language use, enabling successful communication and potential membership of professional communities.