Evidence of audience in MS Hunter 93, a medical text

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore the concept and evidence of audience in the text of MS Hunter 93 (T.4.10), a remedy book written in the second half of the 16th century (c.a. 1565). This manual is presented by its author as a book addressed to anyone who “has not a physician at hand”, so it is presumably intended to a general audience. Several studies about the classification of medical texts have taken into account the audience as a criterion for taxonomy (academic or non-academic). My intention is to show how audience is codified in language by means of strategies such as specific use of vocabulary and the authorities quoted in the running text. My ultimate goal is to see whether the author has really written his text for a general audience, as he affirms in the prologue, or whether he has failed to do so and so we should not take his initial statement at face value.