Medical web encyclopaedias: linguistic aspects and ethical implications

The aim of this paper was to examine the language used in two digital health encyclopaedias and its ethical implications: NHS Choices’ Health A-Z (http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Pages/ hub.aspx) and MedlinePlus Health Topics (https://medlineplus. gov/healthtopics.html). Both are offered to the general public for free by entities sponsored and endorsed by governments. Two sample entries were analysed for this pilot study. One, CANCER, was selected for its relevance as a mass condition, the other, EUTHANASIA / END OF LIFE ISSUES, for its significance in current ethical debates. The analysis was conducted following methods in Discourse Analysis within an Applied Linguistics perspective. The investigation has identified different linguistic strategies employed when dealing with ethically-connoted health issues as opposed to mass conditions. A focus on the ethics of (healthy) choices also emerged, based on the ample use of the adjective “healthy” and lexicon from the semantic field of healthy lifestyles.