Midwifery and medical writing in eigteenth-century British reference works: a historical and diachronic corpus-based study

The general aim of this contribution is a historical and diachronic linguistic analysis of the ‘art and science’ called midwifery as it emerges from the paratext of British reference works published in English between 1701 and 1800. The investigation is essentially focused on the terminology used to introduce midwifery, on the lexical and conceptual network used by different authors to clarify what midwifery is for the ‘community of practice’, and on the recursive linguistic and rhetorical issues to construct the discourse(s) on midwifery. Results highlight a variety of discourses on and around midwifery, along with a variety of genres and approaches, and a variety of terms and registers for different audiences and different purposes.