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 %