Lexemic change and semantic shift in disease names

Abstract

The lexicon of illness terms used by Mexican American women is affected by the practice of speaking both Spanish and English and by the coexistence of several health systems. When there is changing participation in various health systems, with increasing interference and code switching, linguistic evidence for these changes may be found. In some cases an English disease name is borrowed. In others, a cognate is coined from an English disease name. Some terms, now no longer useful, are dropped. Finally, some Spanish disease names which do not have equivalents in English or in scientific medical theory may be retained, but there is a shift in the meaning of the words themselves. The direction of the shift is towards semantic correspondence with the concepts of scientific medicine. In these ways the medical lexicon is changed, with the changes reflecting a new medical culture.