Chapter Two
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basically unfamiliar to patients, would not be presented based on a
patient's cognitive model, patients presumably will try to construct a ‘new’
cognitive model using similar non-scientific, but familiar experiences. In
the case of PILs we see that they indeed explicitly refer to an assumed
‘idealized’ cognitive model on the part of patients, in which everyday
knowledge is complemented by expert knowledge resulting in what can be
termed an ‘augmented’ naive cognitive model. Notably even scientifically
inaccurate naive cultural models seem to work (at least with respect to the
scientific and technical domain; see Ungerer and Schmid 2006: 57) as long
as they enable to make functionally correct predictions. This assumption
can be confirmed by example (8), which also illustrates the exegetical use
of metaphors in (popularized) scientific discourse.
(8) Sepsis (often called "blood poisoning"), is a severe infection with
whole-body inflammatory to response [...]Patients are lay language users, who have no or little scientific
knowledge about the concept SEPSIS. Hence, they will construct a
cognitive model based on everyday knowledge associated with the
concept. In this ‘naive’ cognitive model SEPSIS is metaphorically linked
to POISENING and mapped with domains such DANGER and DEATH,
and therefore primarily associated with attributes such as ‘dangerous’,
‘life-threatening’, etc. This is, by the way, in line with Lee’s (2001: 6)
finding that metaphors support the conceptualization of abstract
specialized target domains. Though the metaphorical explanation of sepsis
as “poisonous substance in the blood” is scientifically inaccurate^12 it meets
the conceptual expectations of non-experts, and is therefore treated as a
popular synonym in PILs.
By contrast, the term sepsis as used in the corresponding SmPC
fragment (example 9) is based on the experts’ scientific cognitive model of
SEPSIS, which means that no additional specification is required:
(9) Sepsis including fatal outcomeAs this model rests on shared clinical experience with this infection,
the concept is associated with a number of specific and necessary
symptoms (such as body temperature above 38.3 C or below 36 C, heart
rate higher than 90 beats a minute, etc.) that accurately define the
(^12) The term sepsis refers to the effects of an infection in which pathogens (fungi,
bacteria) enter the blood system and spread throughout the body, shutting down the
immune system.