Discourse of Drug Information for Experts and Patients
23There are, however, also major differences to be observed, more
specifically regarding the type and quantity of information provided and
the internal structuring of the respective documents. Statistics show that
SmPCs contain more than twice as much words as PILs (in the given case:
5.735 words vs. 2.855 words), which is consistent with the fact that
SmPCs contain much more specialized information than PILs. Moreover,
the information is differently structured reflecting the respective target
users’ mental model and expectations. As experts, first and foremost, are
interested in scientific information on the drug, SmPCs start with this kind
of information (see headings 1 to 3, respectively 5 to 6 in Figure 2);
patients, by contrast, primarily want to know why they should take the
medicine, and how they should do it in a safe and efficient way. This is the
reason why this information is given at the beginning of the document (see
headings 1, 2, 3 in Table 1). In either case the information is provided in a
linear way,^6 the headings predicting a certain type of information, which
enables the reader to process the texts in a selective way (Wermuth,
forthcoming 2016). In this context it should be noted that PILs formulate
headings as anticipated rhetorical questions (e.g. How to take Telmisartan
Teva Pharma), providing subsequently the type of information patients
probably want to know (e.g. how often and how long should the drug be
used or what to do if you take more than you should or if you forget a
dose); in SmPCs, by contrast, the headings are realized as elliptical
nominal phrases (e.g. Posology and method of administration) which
perfectly meets the expert's need for conciseness.
In order to be more explicit about the respective conceptual structures
and the corresponding linguistic realizations, we first of all need to have
more insight into the kind of knowledge contained in the documents under
investigation, and into the relation between specialized knowledge and
specialized discourse. The next section will cover this topic as well as the
broader theoretical framework against which the corpus will be analyzed.
Theoretical framework
Specialized discourse
The most noticeable difference between SmPCs and PILs is situated on
the discursive level. As described in Wermuth (forthcoming 2016) the
(^6) In line with van Dijk (2003: 30) we presume that knowledge structures are non-
linear and hierarchical, which means that epistemic structures need to be adopted
when used in discourse. There is, in other words, no one-to-one relation between
the organization of discourse and knowledge structures.