Rhetoric of Medicine

Poroi, 2013

Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio, 2018

Argumentation theory, or "new rhetoric", focuses on our uses of language when a decision with an action in sight is at stake. In recent years, argumentation theory has proven particularly pertinent to the analysis of the role that language plays in clinical practice and more generally in biomedicine -areas that increasingly involve individual choices regarding health and the body. The combination of rhetoric and medicine, however, is not a new one. The methodological affinities of the two disciplines constituted, in fact, a topos of ancient Greek thought, especially with regards to (1) the ability of the rhetor and the physician to take good decisions, (2) the inherent possibility of deviating from pre-established and fixed paths by elaborating new hypotheses (3) as well as the importance of the individual case in both practices. The idea behind this special issue on "Argumentation and Medicine" arose from the work I have been carrying out over last years in the context of the research group of the Institute of Biomedical Technologies, National Research Council, in Rome. This research in progress is based on the belief that a rhetorical and argumentative perspective -integrated with an ethical stance -can productively retrace and question the reasons why citizens lost interest and confidence in science. Furthermore, this rhetorical perspective may allow us to analyse the debate about fake news, post-truth, and science dissemination. Moreover, this approach can contribute to the contemporary need for what is called "high-quality communication" in the healthcare domain with positive consequences for doctor-patient relationships. In this sense, the main aim of this special issue is to explore the link between argumentation/rhetoric and medicine by putting ancient tradition and contemporary debates into dialogue as well as by gathering contributions from a variety of disciplines which can shed light on the pivotal elements of this relationship. The interconnections between argumentation and medicine need, indeed, to be investigated by different disciplines, methodological approaches and theoretical standpoints (evidence is given by some very interesting and varied examples collected in this issue).

Social History of Medicine, 1999

"COMMENT "Social construction" was already problematic when I published this (cf. Ian Hacking), but I wanted to acknowledge an earlier article by Ludmilla Jordanova. My approach had always been comparable to that of the Strong Programme, even if not explicitly so. My purpose here was, in part, to participate in the breaking of the separation between the social and intellectual history of medicine, treating them symmetrically and as entangled. I felt that my earlier work had given me the credibility needed. However, I tried to avoid references to European philosophers, as far as possible. I felt that I could make the same sort of points, using people who wrote in the Anglo-American traditions. I did not want to stud the text with allusions to the kinds of author that are too readily dismissed by Anglophones. This was a rhetorical manoeuvre. Unfortunately, pressure on space led to many of the references to English and American philosophers being cut, along with pages of case histories, on Lyme disease, for example. I used the early modern period in the hope that it would be recognizable to both those who studied earlier and later periods. It was not my intention to reduce the body to idealist description, but to stress the crucial role of mediating categories and concepts. "Rhetoric" is not here conceived as a matter of conflict but rather of narrative and persuasion, whether verbal or symbolic. ABSTRACT An important element in recent science studies has been the analysis of the social rhetoric involved in the construction of disciplines and knowledge. An explicit use of rhetorical and semiotic frames of reference would illuminate many aspects of the history of medicine and could provide a unifying framework for the field. Medical theories were always intended for use and therefore had to be plausible in the eyes of patients. The interpretation of signs and the construction of explanations lie at the heart of diagnosis, therapy and prognosis. These are usually interactive processes and the efficacy of medical interventions therefore depends upon meaning, narrative and persuasion. Since mental processes are not rigidly separated from bodily functions, trust and expectation have physiological effects that are required for successful healing in all cultures at all times. The conduct of patients and practitioners always turns on the expectation of cure and the establishment of confidence. The efficacy of rhetoric was more readily recognized by practitioners in the past than it has been by social historians of medicine. Once mind—body dualism has been discarded, it can be seen that historians are not studying the context of healing but its very heart."

Technical Communication Quarterly

This article offers an empirical study of literature in the rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM) and the medical humanities (MH). Article traces the topics, funding mechanisms, research methods, theoretical frameworks, evidence types, audience, discourse arrangement patterns, and action orientation that constitute the scholarship in the sample to offer a landscape of the current state of RHM and the MH. Findings can be leveraged to assess the potential for alignment between these fields for future research.

This is a special topics Honors seminar that investigates the roles communication plays in analytical thought, scientific investigation, and the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental and physical illnesses. The study of artful communication, the course argues, gives us the tools needed to investigate the mystic power of scientific discourse, the objectivity of scientific investigation, and the deep impact of medical discourse on the individual body and the body polis. Thus, students in this course will discover the tools that scientists and doctors, politicians and experts, have available to them when they desire to influence our common world by shaping knowledge, its products and uses, and the publics who consume and participate in their goods—knowledge, technology, medicine, and health. We are all scientists, as A. F. Huxley argues, but more specifically, those who are considering a career in science or medicine will learn in this course how to think critically about the internal and external communicative processes unique to their field and how those practices shape the knowledge, practice, and moral responsibility of their professional enterprise. We are all humans, but more specifically, students in the humanities will explore how to apply their knowledge of language, philosophy, and history to improve their relationships with caregivers enrich their knowledge of the natural world. Most importantly, we are all citizens. This is what unites us and this is why tax dollars are used to fund our enterprise in this very classroom. Being present, here, means a commitment to trying to build a better common world than the one we inherited. Thus, all students will learn how to critically analyze the public arguments of science and medicine and to be mindful of how scientific and medical discourses have been used, historically, to harm, disenfranchise, and kill others.

Discourse plays an important role in medicine, and medical discourse in the broadest sense (discourse in and about healing, curing, or therapy; expressions of suffering; and relevant language ideologies) has profound anthropological significance. As modes of social action, writing and speaking help constitute medical institutions, curative practices, and relations of authority in and beyond particular healing encounters. This review describes cultural variation in medical discourse and variation across genres and registers. It then surveys two approaches to analyzing medical discourse: conversation analysis (CA) and discourse studies echoing Foucault’s work, attempting to spur dialogue between them. Such dialogue could be fruitful because, despite hesitancy to invoke macrosocial variables, conversation analysts as well as Foucaultian discourse analysts have reflected on medical authority. Finally, the article reviews recent attempts to contextualize closely analyzed interactions— written exchanges as well as face-to-face clinical encounters—vis-`a-vis the global circulation of linguistic forms and ideologies.

Medical Discourse in Professional, Academic and Popular Settings

Medical Discourse in Professional, Academic and Popular Settings is a newly edited volume by PILAR ORDÓñEZ-LÓPEZ and NURIA EDO-MARZÁ and published by Multilingual Matters, particularly as part of the series Language at Work, which, in general terms, seeks to disseminate workplace research. The edited volume reviewed here represents an updated collection of chapters that explore medical discourse from various perspectives. Medical discourse, as shown in this volume, appears not to be exclusively limited to health professionals; rather, it is part of a wider audience, including, for example, patients or professionals of different fields. Nowadays, medical discourse is somehow more accessible to the general public (Pilegaard, 2007) and medical knowledge is then part of society, who may make judgements and evaluate it (Weingart, 2002). This particular edited volume is a relevant and welcome contribution that serves to understand how medical discourse is constructed as well as to reflect upon the issue of successful medical communication.

Technical Communication Quarterly, 2018

To forge collaborative ties among the rhetoric of health and medicine, the medical humanities, and medicine itself, scholars need shared terms. We argue that techne can unite researchers from across these disciplines. To demonstrate, we discuss our interdisciplinary research study, Writing Diabetes. By learning about the techne of rhetoric and writing about diabetes, participants became more attentive to the techne of their health experience-or "health techne"-enabling them to invent new ways of "doing" diabetes.