Language matters: a linguist’s view on medicine

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by BMJ in Sexually Transmitted Infections on 26/08/2017, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/sextrans-2017-053240 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Language matters. I have seen this simple statement more times than I care to remember. It is used by patients, nurses, psychologists, doctors and many other healthcare professionals. In this editorial I would like to offer a view of what a statement means to a linguist. And so, first, what we say does not just mean, it means something in a particular context; second, even more importantly, language does not consist only of words, and this is why medicine and medics should focus on their ‘way of speaking’