¹Briska Solomon Barkindo, ²Tosin Halima Oladimeji

¹Department of English and Literary Studies Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria

²Department of English and Literature Education Federal University of Education, Zaria
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-3913-5487

DOI : https://doi.org/10.58806/ijsshmr.2026.v5i6n35

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ABSTRACT

Medical reports are foundational instruments of institutional healthcare communication that do more than record clinical observations; they actively construct illness, constitute patient identities, and enact professional authority through language. This paper analyses how post-diagnostic medical reports from Nigerian public hospitals discursively construct illness, patients, and biomedical ideology. Thirty reports were purposively sampled from three tertiary health institutions in Nigeria covering internal medicine, obstetrics and gynaecology, and general surgery. Data analysis follows Norman Fairclough's three-dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis model, supplemented by Michel Foucault's theory of discourse, knowledge, and power. The analysis identifies five thematic dimensions: the discursive construction of illness through diagnostic labelling, severity framing, and prognostic language; the construction of patient identity through agentive suppression and diagnostic substitution; the enactment of medical authority through modal constructions and certainty markers; the naturalisation of biomedical ideology; and the deployment of nominalisation, passive voice, jargon, presupposition, and euphemism as core linguistic strategies. Findings demonstrate that clinical language in Nigerian medical reports systematically marginalises patient subjectivity, naturalises institutional power, and suppresses the structural determinants of ill health. The study extends Nigerian medical discourse scholarship into written clinical documentation and has practical implications for medical education, clinical communication policy, and patient rights advocacy.

KEYWORDS:

critical discourse analysis; medical discourse; illness construction; Nigerian healthcare; biomedical ideology; patient identity

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Cite this Article:Barkindo, B. S., & Oladimeji, T. H. (2026). Language, Ideology and the Construction of Illness in Selected Medical Reports from Nigerian Hospitals: A Critical Discourse Analysis. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE HUMANITY & MANAGEMENT RESEARCHS, 5(6), 1663-1674. https://doi.org/10.58806/ijsshmr.2026.v5i6n35

VOlUME 05 ISSUE 06 June 2026