Change in cognitive systems understood as the placing of new tags on old
meanings or as the application of an old classification scheme to new objects
(Basso 1973) is clearly inadequate for understanding medical change. If illness
terms are associated with typical experiences of stress in a society, changes in
medical language will be intimately related to more basic changes in the society.
As new medical terms become known in a society, they find their way into
existing semantic networks. Thus while new explanatory models may be
introduced, it is clear why changes in medical rationality seldom follow quickly.
In conclusion, if we are to develop a framework for .understanding the
relationship between disease and language that will advance our knowledge of
the way psychosocial and cultural factors affect disease, we need to develop
both new theories of disease and a new medical semantics. Disease will have to
be conceived, as Wartofsky claims, as "a socio-historical and cultural phenomenon"
(1975:67), as "an intricate and many-layered network of social, personal
and organic contexts - from society to cell, so to speak - in which the doctor
intervenes at specific points, diagnostically and therapeutically..." (1975:
79-80). 14 And a corresponding semantics is necessary that understands the
meaning of medical language to be constituted in relation to disease as semantic
networks, configurations of symbols and experiences mobilized in social
interaction and deeply integrated into the social and cultural structure of a
society.
University of California, Davis