Words from the wards: Paronyms in medical article titles

Aim To examine the presence of paronyms in medical article titles, analyze their stylistic features and pragmatic potential, and provide relevant guidelines for EAP students and early career writers. Material and methods We examined the occurrence of paronyms in medical article titles sourced from the PubMed database using its Advanced Search Builder (“search termTitle” queries). The study relied on the methods of quantitative examination, stylistic, structural, etymological, and contextual analyses, using The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Baldick, 2015), Writing with Clarity and Style: A Guide to Rhetorical Devices for Contemporary Writers (Harris, 2016), Latin-Ukrainian Thesaurus of Clinical Terms (Bieliaieva, 2016), and Latin-Ukrainian Medical Encyclopedic Dictionary (Bieliaieva, Zhdan & Tsisyk, 2020). Results The study identified 43 paronymic pairs, 6 paronymic triads, and 1 paronymic tetrad across 207 medical article titles. We analyzed the detected paronymic lexemes in terms of their etymology, morphology, orthography, phonology, stylistic features, and pragmatic functions. In medical article titles, paronyms underlie paronomasia (puns), alliteration, antithesis, rhetorical questions, metaphor, repetition, and rhyme. Conclusions By examining how paronyms are used in article titles, EAP students and early career writers can develop a deeper understanding of the subtle distinctions between paronymic lexemes and subsequently use them correctly, recognize the rhetorical devices and employ the pragmatic strategies in academic writing, thus enhancing their language proficiency and developing critical thinking skills. This will ultimately promote mastery of the skills needed to create engaging and compelling titles, which can increase the visibility and impact of research articles.