INSTRUCTIONAL DISCOURSE IN MILITARY MEDICAL OPERATIONAL PROCEDURES: A SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

This study examines the functional grammatical and lexical features of directive discourse in military medical Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), drawing on a corpus of twelve chapters from Emergency War Surgery (5th edition). Using a Systemic Functional Linguistic framework and corpus-assisted analysis, the study identifies recurrent patterns of imperatives, passives, conditionals, and modal verbs that operationalize medical actions in high-pressure contexts. The findings reveal a high density of specialist material-process verbs and a very limited use of phrasal verbs, indicating a preference for concise, action-oriented formulations. Modality and conditional clauses support both procedural standardization and context-sensitive clinical decision-making. The study argues that military medical SOPs constitute a hybrid genre distinct from civilian medical discourse and discusses implications for English for Military Medical Purposes