Elisabetta Lonati (MA, PhD) is Associate Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Eastern Piedmont “Amedeo Avogadro” (Vercelli – Italy) where she teaches English Linguistics and the History of the English Language for the BA (Foreign Languages) and the MA (Languages, Cultures, and Tourism). Her research is mainly focussed on Early and Late Modern English lexicology and lexicography. The main topics of interest are: the origin, elaboration and classification of English technical and scientific vocabulary in eighteenth-century encyclopaedic works (universal dictionaries of arts and sciences, medical dictionaries); the language of identity and ideology (dictionaries of trade and commerce); the language of law, crime and punishment (focus on ethics, pain, penalty). Her present studies are devoted to the investigation of medical writing, and to the elaboration of British medical discourse in a variety of texts to be analysed in their historical and sociolinguistic contexts (textbooks, manuals of instruction, reference works in general). Further studies include: 18th-century medical paratext (prefaces, introductory sections, tables of contents, and indices, appendices, glossaries); the language of medical ethics; the linguistic and textual representation of midwifery over time; Late Modern English translation and dissemination of British medical works into Italian (DiachronicTS and cultural translation; second hand translation). She has published a book titled Communicating Medicine. British Medical Discourse in 18th-century Reference Works (Di/Segni, Ledizioni, Milano 2017).
