Discourse of Drug Information for Experts and Patients
27As this example shows, the interaction is first of all explicated by
referring to the underlying cause-effect relation (see first clause). Hereby a
series of terms (digoxin peak plasma concentration, trough concentration,
etc.), and specific verb tenses are used: the passive voice (was co-
administered, were observed) refers to previous medical actions (implying
an implicit medical agent), whereas the progressives initiating, adjusting,
and discontinuing as well as the imperative monitor express the medical
agent’s participation in the conceived situation. In the patient version
(example 7), by contrast, the interaction of the substances is described
from the patients’ viewpoint using Common Ground terms and an active
verbal style, following at the same time a different argumentation pattern:
(7) Your doctor may need to change the dose of these other medicines or
take other precautions. In some cases you may have to stop taking one
of the medicines. This applies especially to the medicines listed below
taken at the same time with Telmisartan Teva Pharma: Digoxin [...]In the above example the cause-effect relation remains unexplained,
the focus being on the possible actions to be undertaken by the patient if
the interaction described occurs. The situation mentioned in the clause is
explicitly related to the conceptualization of the communicative situation
from a patient’s perspective: the use of specific tense marking (present
tense) and deictic elements such as the personal pronoun you identifies the
patient as communicative participant, whereas the doctor participates as an
external authority in the communicative process (this implicit role is
expressed by the third person your doctor and the modal may as well as by
the progress you may have to stop taking, which expresses a potential
intervention by an implicit doctor).
The features described can be assumed to be general phenomena of
specialized discourse (van Dijk 2003). The differences between the
specialized discourse of SmPCs on the one hand, and the everyday
discourse of PILs on the other, however, cannot be sufficiently explained
without referring to intralingual translation that will be further detailed in
the following section.
Intralingual translation as cognitive reconceptualization
As already mentioned in Section 2, the documents under investigation are
drafted and submitted in English, and subsequently translated by
pharmacists and/or translators into the languages of the EU countries
where the product will be marketed. The final quality is reviewed by EMA
in cooperation with the member states according to strict rules (such as