El gènere discursiu dels casos clínics

Abstract

From the perspective of discourse analysis, we understand genres as discursive constructions that can take varied forms and convey in different modalities, with conventions established and shared by the community. Rather than a textual category, a genre is a kind of socio-communicative event that is generated in a specific community, with certain communicative purposes. Healthcare professionals have a wide range of written and oral genres, each of which is characterized by some purposes, as well as a series of formal, linguistic and content conventions. Based on our work with clinical case reports in Catalan, English and Spanish, in this article we try to characterize the genre, as well as to review critically the bibliography from the fields of discourse analysis and the theory of genres, and also the prescriptive texts generated within the discursive community itself, about how clinical cases are or should be.

Keywords

• clinical case report
• medical genres
• communicative purposes