If you pop over there: a corpus-based study of conditionals in medical discourse

摘要: Abstract There has been relatively little examination of conditionals in naturally occurring discourse as opposed to studies based on intuition-derived data. The aim this study, then, is complement previous work by focusing if-conditionals medical discourse. Three genres are selected for study: research articles, journal editorials and doctor–patient consultations. fact that two written one spoken allows comparison conditional use speech writing. data comprise a total 177 from 100,000-word sub-corpus. study focuses variety formal, semantic pragmatic aspects conditionals, shows there are, indeed, interesting differences the across genres. In consultations instance, prove useful resource managing interaction with politeness sensitivity. methods sections contrast, mainly function provide operational definitions. paper concludes some brief reflections pedagogic implications.