Scholarly literature on the lexico-grammatical features of medical case reports - A mini review

Abstract

Medical case report (MCR) is an important written clinical discourse. Many applied linguists using corpora linguistic approach have identified MCRs to possess lexical and grammatical features that are distinctive, rhetorical, and teachable. The present study reviews scholarly literature published in indexed journals to cull out the salient lexico-grammatical features of MCRs. The identified rhetoric grammatical features were dominant use of past tense, active voice, and the occurrence of semi-technical words such as unique adjectives to bring out the significance of the report, verbs of Latin origin. In countries where English poses challenges, familiarizing on the linguistic features of MCR will enable trainers of medical education programs to develop English language teaching modules to instruct novice medicos in MCR preparation. This initiative could convert English language classes into sessions with meaningful learning experience. Further, publishing MCR is considered to be an important professional research task of clinicians; therefore, this insight will help novice writers to make impressive and genuine case reports.