Linguocultural Variability of Medical Discharge Genre

This study presents a comparative analysis of the genre characteristics of medical discharge documents within Russian and British linguistic culture. The relevance of this research stems from the insufficient exploration of written medical discourse genres, as well as the lack of data regarding variations in the representation of documented templates for outpatient and inpatient medical discharge records and their sociocultural specifics. The aim of this study is to conduct a comparative analysis of medical discharge documents produced in Russian and British linguistic cultures to identify their distinctive features, intragenre variations within a single linguistic culture, and intercultural similarities and differences. Methodological approaches employed include document analysis combined with comparative, stylistic, and interpretative analysis procedures. The study establishes the implications of the key genre-forming parameters for the examined type of documents. The analysis reveals that, within the domestic linguistic culture, intragenre variability is associated with modifications to such parameters as chronotope, producent-recipient orientation, compositional-structural characteristics, and linguistic features. Inter-cultural variability manifests itself in compositional-structural and formal-content-related differences, objective modality, and the intended audience of documents across the compared linguistic cultures. The findings contribute to the theory of intercultural professional communication and the practice of specialized translation.