Der Prozess der Medikalisierung – eine diskurslinguistische Perspektive
The Process of Medicalization – A Discourse-Linguistic Perspective

Summary/Abstract: An increasing number of aspects of everyday life and various social phenomena are now being classified within medical categories and interpreted from a medical perspective. This article examines the process of medicalization, which has been primarily studied as a medical or sociological phenomenon so far, from a discourse-linguistic point of view. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of language in this process: language constructs meanings, defines disease concepts, and influences societal norms. To analyze linguistic conflicts within the medicalization process, the article applies Felder’s concept of „semantic struggles“. Based on this concept and the collected corpus, the article develops a typology of such struggles within health-related discourse. This typology comprises four categories: struggles over key terms, definitions, partial meanings, and referential relations. Using selected examples from medical discourse, the article illustrates how discourse actors (e.g., pharmaceutical companies) engage in these semantic battles. Semantic struggles are interpreted here as expressions of differing interests among discourse participants and serve to establish specific interpretive patterns. The typology presented is conceived as an analytical matrix with a universal character. It offers a tool for examining such struggles across various discursive fields and enables critical reflection on the linguistic construction of health and illness. The article also proposes metacommunicative phrases to help identify individual types of semantic struggles. It emphasizes that linguistic practices in health discourse contribute not only to the normalization of certain perspectives but also to the marginalization or elimination of others.

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