A medical debate of “heated pamphleteering” in the early eighteenth
century
This chapter probes into the controversy of smallpox
inoculation that followed soon after the novel method was introduced into
England and culminated in the second decade of the eighteenth century.
Polemical argumentation displays verbal aggression, and irony and sarcasm
take the upper hand in interpersonal language use that bursts into personal
insults in a pamphlet that serves as data for the empirical part. The method
of analysis is qualitative discourse analysis in a multi-layered contextual
frame in accordance with the historical pragmatic approach. The analysis
shows how transgressions of the prevailing norms are exploited and presents
a far cry from the recommended Royal Society style of writing science as
well as from the more rhetorical way of argumentation favoured in
contemporary polite society; even an old pattern of scholastic argumentation
is revived to poke fun at the target.
Article outline
- 1.Conflict discourse in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
- 2.Data, research questions and methods
- 3.The pragmatic space of aggressive language use
- 4.A brief history of smallpox literature
- 5.Main protagonists and what they wrote
- 6.Norms of medical writing in the eighteenth century
- 6.1Norm 1: Royal Society “plain” style
- 6.2Norm 2: Rhetorical eloquence
- 6.3Norm 3: Scholastic argumentation with moral concerns
- 7.Exploiting the norms with meaning reversals
- 7.1Setting the scene
- 7.2From general to personal accusations
- 7.3Demeaning professional skills and experience
- 7.4Language issues
- 7.5Modification of a classical argumentation pattern
- 7.6National feelings: Us versus them
- 8.Conclusions
-
Notes
-
Sources
-
References
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