A Stylistic Analysis of Medical Article Titles Focused on the War in Ukraine

Abstract

The paper examines the rhetorical devices used in the metadata of medical research publications focused on the health implications of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The aim of the study is to analyze the stylistic means in article titles, through which the scientists aspire to convey their message to the audience, attract the readers’ attention, persuade and stimulate them to take specific actions. We selected 697 research papers from the PubMed database, published since 24 February 2022, using relevant search terms (“Ukraine”, “war”, “impacts”, and “health”), and examined them by applying the methods of stylistic, structural, and contextual analysis. The study detected 17 stylistic techniques (alliteration and assonance, allusion, anaphora, antithesis, ellipsis, idiom, metaphor, oxymoron, parallelism, paronomasia, periphrasis, personification, repetition, rhetorical questions, ecphonesis, and rhyming titles) that are used to highlight the numerous detrimental impacts of the war. The authors emphasize that analyzing the stylistic features of contemporary publications is essential for the advanced study of a foreign language, in particular, for identifying and comprehending the implicit meanings of texts, as well as applying relevant rhetorical devices in professional writing appropriately in order to achieve pragmatic communication goals. The findings of this study have important implications for educators in English for Academic Purposes and early-career academics, aiming to publish their research in international journals, aspiring to enhance visibility and maximize the impact of their articles within the scientific community.