Abstract

There are at least two fundamental questions in medical ethics: What constitutes the ethical components associated with medical practice?; and How are these components realized in daily medical practice? This dissertation is concerned with question . In particular, focus is on daily medical linguistic practices of physicians. Due to the entailment of question in question , however, a brief answer for is also provided. Specifically, it is argued that a tripartite theoretical ethical framework is associated with medical practice, consisting of consequentialist, deontological, and virtue ethics components. Turning towards daily medical linguistic practices, two daily medical linguistic practices are examined: ways of referring to patients and referring to disease. Both are addressed as they occur in the context of physician-physician dialogues in a clinical, hospital setting. In light of a background argument concerning the theoretical connection between language, worldview, and ethical perspective, in which language is shown to play a role in defining both worldview and ethical perspective, the ethical perspective of physicians qua medical language users is addressed. It is suggested that although medical practice has the tripartite normative ethical foundation in theory, the practical influence of medical language used for diagnosis is to impose an essentially consequentialist framework within which patients are conceived. Consistent with this limited ethical framework, disease language is noted to suggest connotations of certainty. In light of the ambiguous and uncertain character of medical encounters between physicians and patients, the implication of certainty by disease language is problematic. Likewise, the limited, essentially consequentialist perspective of physicians is inappropriate. Physicians must therefore recognize the limitations of disease language and refrain from solely using the kind of medical language which conceptually reduces patients to mere disease loci. Physicians will thus be better able to account for the ethical implications of medical practice