A diachronic study of the language of chiropractic

This study investigates how the language of chiropractic has changed over time. A collection of material, published up until approximately 1950 and consisting of textbooks, monographs and lecture notes from Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College, was analyzed to identify commonly occurring words and phrases. The results were compared to a corpus of recent articles from the Journal of the Canadian Chiropractic Association. This permitted the identification of words which were over-represented in the historical literature and therefore likely have become somewhat archaic or represent themes which are of less import in the modern chiropractic literature. Words which were over-represented in the historical literature often referred to anatomical, pathological and biomechanical concepts. Conversely, words which were comparatively over-represented in the modern chiropractic literature often referred to concepts of professionalism, the clinical interaction and evidence-based care. A detailed analysis is presented of trends in the use of the conceptually important terms subluxation and adjustment.