Discovery of the source of cholera
John Snow drew up a map of Golden square
and marked on every case of cholera He noticed a pattern around the broad street
pump and so decided to remove the handle of the pump
The cases of cholera soon stopped In 1854 he sent a letter to the Medical Times
and the editor of the Gazette Our text was published one year later
John Snow
He was well known and popular Queen Victoria hired him to help give birth to
her 8th and 9th child which spread his publicity He was an educated man, he attended the
University of London His education shows in his choice of language;
he used many Latinate words such as: terminated, epidemic, malady and fatal
John Snow
He came from a working class background and
was brought up in one of the poorest parts of York
This is a good example of social mobility in the 19th century.
John Snow
Terminated: comes from a Latin root Extirpated: Latin origin, not commonly used, we
compared it to ‘extinct’ which was used much more frequently which shows his vocabulary and well read background
This shows that with the increase of social mobility he could to rely on his knowledge and not his status
He also used the word ‘proprietors’ instead of something more basic like ‘owners’ this shows he used his language to display his influential power
Lexis
Proprietors
Furnished
Complex lexis Extirpated
Malady
As you can see from the graphs, the use of
many complex Latinate words has declined since the 19th century
Education was much more valued and less common, meaning the people who had an education came from a rich background or were very high achievers
Nowadays access to university is much easier which shows in their use of language and decline of Latinate words.
Complex lexis
The longest sentence contains 4 commas, 1
semi-colon and 1 colon. This is a pro longed sentence that wouldn’t exist in modern day texts of the same genre as full stops would used more frequently.
The readability is therefore reduced. John snows report had a readability score of 21.8 compared to a modern report which scored only 11.4 (score of 22 + are considered graduate level reading)
Grammar
Although the earlier text had the same
audience, the readability age was higher compared to the modern text this could be because:
Less efficient use of statistics e.g. fractions instead of percentages (three-
quarters instead of 75%)Descriptive rather than scientific “probably equals” “upwards of five hundred” “undoubtedly much greater”
Audience
Graph to show the use of the %