ScholarWorks@중앙대학교

초록

Medical practice is a multi-layered phenomenon characterized by systemic complexity, epistemicuncertainty, and outcome‑oriented nature. However, legal discourse in medical litigation oftenreduces this complexity by employing active/passive grammatical constructions, framing clinician–patient interactions in terms of a simplistic offender/victim binary. In response, this article introducesthe concept of the middle-voice, defined by two grammatical features: (1) the internal involvementof human and non-human elements in the occurrence of action, and (2) the dynamic emergenceof action through contextual interactions. It proposes a middle-voice structure that incorporatesantecedent-condition clauses, inanimate subject constructions, and the Korean “-ge doeda” form(equivalent to the English verb “become”). This framework supports the development of middlevoicejustice, which moves beyond adversarial models and promotes a more inclusive culture ofmedical accountability and safety. By offering a theoretical basis for institutional applications, such asin the design of apology laws, this approach enables more accurate descriptions of medical accidents,more balanced attributions of responsibility, and reconsideration of the institutional foundationsnecessary for a just medical culture.

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