Vocabulary in Traditional Chinese Medicine: Insights from corpora

• Lu, Cailing ^[1] ; Coxhead, Averil ^[2]
  1. [1] Zhejiang University of Technology

     Zhejiang University of Technology

     China

     
  2. [2] Victoria University of Wellington

     Victoria University of Wellington

     Nueva Zelanda

     
• Localización: ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics, ISSN 0019-0810, ISSN-e 1783-1490, Vol. 171, Nº. 1, 2020, págs. 34-61
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • This article reports on a corpus-based study of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) vocabulary. It first provides a vocabulary profile of English-medium Traditional Chinese Medicine textbooks and journal articles using Nation’s (2012) British National Corpus/Corpus of Contemporary American English (BNC/COCA 25,000) frequency word lists and supplementary word lists of proper nouns, abbreviations, and compounds. Then, it categorizes items outside Nation’s BNC/COCA into Chinese loan words (e.g., qi, yang) and medical lexis (e.g., cinnamomi, rehmanniae), which cover 5.93% of the TCM Corpora in total. The next analysis focuses on Schmitt and Schmitt’s (2014) high, mid, low-frequency vocabulary framework and how it differs from Western medicine. Finally, a vocabulary load analysis shows that to reach 98%, 13,000 word families plus four supplementary lists and two TCM-specific lists are needed. Together, these analyses provide us with a rounded picture of TCM vocabulary. Implications for pedagogy and suggestions for future research follow.