This study aims to examine the public's perception of the appropriateness of metaphorical expressions used by medical professionals in medical discourse. A sample of 142 individuals were asked to evaluate the appropriateness of ten metaphorical expressions used by health-care experts. Additionally, questions were posed about the effects of using metaphors. The ten items showed variability in the degree of appropriateness, with metaphors being considered more appropriate when the target was familiar and the similarity between the source and target domains was high. Positive aspects of metaphor use by medical professionals included aiding in understanding, with respondents perceiving such professionals as kind, considerate of patients, and trustworthy. Negative aspects included difficulties in understanding when the similarity between the metaphorical targets was low, requiring lengthy and complex thought processes, and potential misunderstandings of scientific facts. Approximately 15% of respondents reported their own experiences with metaphorical expressions in medical discourse, noting that these metaphors helped them understand the illness and treatment, and induced positive behavioral changes.

Korean Oriental Medicine has unequal access to some common linguistic resources that it shares with biomedicine under the dual medical system. At the societal level, the biomedical linguistic hegemonies allow biomedicine to unmark its entities, while mark Oriental ones with han- ‘Korean,’ as the prequel to the present study (Kim 2015c) illustrates. However, there has been little research that investigates the unmarking norms at the (intra-)institutional level of Oriental consultations in reference to those within the discourse of Oriental medicine itself. Noting the gap in research, the present study explores the Oriental interactions that are apparently immune to the societally imposed (un)marking norms and investigates the types, distributions, and meanings (in particular, referential specificity) of the unmarked references to Oriental entities. To do so, it qualitatively analyzes selections from a data set of 15-hour-long naturally-occurring consultations between Oriental doctors and their patients. The findings demonstrate that Oriental interactions frequently form a linguistic enclave, the intra-institutional norms within which regulate that the references to Oriental doctors, clinics, and medications be unmarked. Within the enclave, the unmarked uysas make a reference to a generic Oriental doctor or doctors, while the unmarked first-mention sensayngnim, albeit a rare example, to a specific Oriental doctor (more specifically, the chief doctor). The unmarked first-mention pyengwens, mostly disambiguated by the proximal deictic expressions, refer to the specific Oriental institutions at which the interactions are in progress. The unmarked first-mention yaks refer to specific Oriental medications, whereas the unmarked to a generic one. The apparent contradiction between the findings of the present study and those of the prequel is not surprising at all, but rather is indicative of the very “heteroglossia” (Bakhtin 1984) under the dual medical system in Korea. That is, the references to either of the medicines under the dual system can go unmarked while abiding by a respective set of the referential norms, albeit at different levels: one at the intra-institutional level and the other at the inter-institutional and societal level. Their distributions are also discussed on qualitative and ethnographic terms.

Korean Oriental medicine has unequal access to some linguistic resources that it shares with biomedicine under the dual medical system despite their comparable legal positions. At the societal level, their asymmetric linguistic hegemonies are encapsulated in, and perpetuated by the Medical Law of Korea (e.g., Ch. 1, Article 2), which consistently marks the former with han- ‘Korean’, while unmarking the latter. However, there has been little empirical research that examines the unmarking norms in unfolding discourse. Noting the paucity, the present study investigates whether or not the societal marking norms persist at a situational level, particularly in unfolding Oriental medical interactions, and if so, in what forms. To do so, it qualitatively analyzes a data set of 15-hour-long naturally-occurring consultations between Oriental doctors and their patients. It evidences the consistency of the unmarking norms at the situational level and demonstrates that the first-mention references point to biomedical entities even within an Oriental interaction despite the absence of any linguistic markings that favor biomedicine. Thus, potentially ambiguous unmarked first-mentions such as uysa (sensayngnim) 'doctor,' pyengwen 'hospital/clinic,' yak 'drug,' and uyhak 'medical science' are macrolinguistically disambiguated. Consequently, they discursively materialize the macrolinguistic hegemony that biomedicine holds under the dual medical authority. The very fact that such one-way intertextual references pervade even unfolding Oriental discourse with little confusion and resistance is symbolic of biomedical dominance and power asymmetry between the two medicines.