ABSTRACT VIEW
BRIDGING MEDICINE AND LITERATURE: THE POWER OF DIGITAL HUMANITIES
M.P. Marín García
Universidad Católica de Valencia San Vicente Martir (SPAIN)
Language is not only essential for communication but also plays a crucial role in shaping culture and regulating societal dynamics. Through language, societies construct and reflect their worldview. Within this framework, specialized languages, such as medical and healthcare terminology, serve as significant expressions of cultural and social dynamics. Medicine and health are recurring themes in both literature and audiovisual media, ranging from central narrative elements to more tangential appearances. Beyond their cultural value, these works also offer immense pedagogical potential, particularly in fostering medical education and facilitating the acquisition of specialized languages in diverse educational contexts.

This study demonstrates the effectiveness of Digital Humanities in analyzing the representative linguistic features of a literary work with a medical-healthcare theme. By combining descriptive, quantitative, and qualitative methodologies, the research highlights the linguistic richness of a selected literary corpus. Tools such as Voyant Tools and AI algorithms are employed to generate results including lexical frequencies or semantic cloud. These findings not only corroborate cultural and literary aspects but also reveal practical insights into the pedagogical applications of medical literature.

In the field of medical education, this approach supports the development of communication skills by enabling learners to engage with authentic texts rich in technical terminology and ethical narratives. For language learners, especially those studying English for Specific Purposes (ESP), analyzing medical-themed texts provides a contextualized way to master complex vocabulary, discourse structures, and cultural nuances. By making these materials accessible through digital tools, educators can create engaging, data-driven learning experiences that combine technical language acquisition with a deeper understanding of societal and cultural contexts.

AI tools represent a significant advance in the linguistic analysis of specialized texts, enabling discoveries that would be unfeasible manually or through traditional approaches. However, human oversight remains essential to guide, interpret, and validate the results, ensuring that technology complements rather than replaces critical judgment in literary and educational analysis.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Digital Humanities, medical literature, linguistic analysis, specialized language.

Event: INTED2025
Session: English for Special Purposes
Session time: Monday, 3rd of March from 17:15 to 18:30
Session type: ORAL