Studies on the terminology of expert knowledge tend to neglect the relevanc
e of sociological data, in spite of general acceptance that knowledge and s
ocial practice are interdependent. This paper explores expert knowledge and
practice by examining 'styles of knowing' and how they differ according to
the ways in which experts establish their authority.
For assessing medical authority in microsocial settings, the author takes r
ecourse to Weber's three ideal types. The study shows that for a charismati
c healer who seeks to reach mutual consensus with his clientele vagueness i
n terminology can be useful. When, however, medical authority depends on re
cognition by superiors and peers in modern bureaucratic institutions, vague
terms tend to be avoided. So, the same term that a charismatic healer may
refer to in a vague sense becomes more explicitly defined in the bureaucrat
ic setting. Its sense is more clearly delimited and denotational qualities
are emphasized. In institutions where traditional authority prevails, like
those of the literate elite in highly stratified traditional societies, the
technical terminology is not only vague, but notoriously polysemous.
The article draws on ethnographic data of Chinese medicine and qigong thera
py as practised in the late eighties in Kunming city, the capital of Yunnan
province in the People's Republic of China, but it is meant to contribute
in a more general way to an exploration of the ways in which claims to medi
cal authority interrelate with word meaning, language use, and `styles of k
nowing'. The term investigated, shen, refers to the spiritual, a domain of
human experience that is widely acknowledged by traditional medical practit
ioners, but difficult to evaluate by sociological analysis.