Filling gaps in medical knowledge. Comparative mechanisms in Evidence-based Medicine

This contribution is about the semantic organization and the lexico-grammatical description of the domain of comparison in a corpus of electronic papers dealing with medical research trials and observational studies, especially those grounded in the Evidence-Based-Medicine (EBM) approach. Regardless of the method chosen, study design always hinges on a combination of relations of similarity, difference or identity encoded in various ways in the lexico-grammatical resources used either at clause or clause-complex level. As well as acting as cohesive devices for marking textual status, comparative relations are meaning-making resources that help construe and disseminate knowledge with scientific standing. Comparative mechanisms occur frequently at all the stages of a medical research study: from descriptions of the sample population, to the procedures employed, to the results obtained. Furthermore, the exploration of comparison offers the possibility to see how the dimension of (inter-)subjectivity manifests itself in particular instances of medical discourse. Given its ubiquitous use, comparison emerges as a key linguistic device, aimed at filling gaps in medical knowledge and building up valuable and relevant research evidence capable of informing and, hopefully, improving clinical practice.