Rhetorical Ethos in Health and Medicine


Book Description

This book explores rhetorical ethos and its ongoing role in patients’ credibility and in misdiagnoses stemming from gender, race and class-based biases. Drawing on the concept of ethos as a theoretical framework, it explores health and mental illness across different conditions and across different methodological approaches. Extending work on ethos in clinical encounters and public discourse about biomedicine and presenting new research on the rhetoric of mental health, stigma and mental illness, the book explores how bias in clinical settings can lead to symptoms labelled "in the patient’s head" masking treatable medical problems. This notable contribution to the rhetoric of health and medicine will be of interest to all researchers and graduate students of rhetoric and composition studies, rhetoric of health and medicine, disability studies, medical humanities, communication, and psychology.




Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine


Book Description

Assessing rhetorical principles of contemporary health issues Hypochondriacs are vulnerable to media hype, anorexics are susceptible to public scrutiny, and migraine sufferers are tainted with the history of the “migraine personality,” maintains rhetorical theorist Judy Z. Segal. All are influenced by the power of persuasion. Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine explores persistent health conditions that resist conventional medical solutions. Using a range of rhetorical principles, Segal analyzes how patients and their illnesses are formed within the physician/patient relationship. The intractable problem of a patient’s rejection of a doctor’s advice, says Segal, can be considered a rhetorical failure—a failure of persuasion. Examining the discourse of medicine through case studies, applications, and analyses, Segal illustrates how illnesses are described in ways that limit patients’ choices and satisfaction. She also illuminates psychiatric conditions, infectious diseases, genetic testing, and cosmetic surgeries through the lens of rhetorical theory. Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine bridges critical analysis for scholarly, professional, and lay audiences. Segal highlights the persuasive element in diagnosis, health policy, illness experience, and illness narratives. She also addresses questions of direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs, the role of health information in creating the “worried well” and problems of trust and expertise in physician/patient relationships. A useful resource for critical common sense in everyday life, the text provides an effective examination of a society increasingly influenced by the rhetoric of health and medicine.




Rhetoric of Health and Medicine As/Is


Book Description

Examines how healthcare and medical issues circulate in the social, cultural, economic, and political aspects of our world.




Leadership in Healthcare


Book Description

Leadership in Healthcare opens up the world of leadership studies to all healthcare professionals. Physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals spend thousands of hours studying the science and technology of healthcare, and years or even decades putting into practice recent findings in molecular biology, clinical diagnostics, and therapeutics. By contrast, the topic of leadership and the traits of effective leaders tend to receive remarkably little attention. Yet no less vital than an understanding of how to interpret diagnostic tests and design care plans is a grasp of healthcare's organizational side, including the operation of multidisciplinary care teams, academic departments, and hospitals. If patient care, education, research, and professional service are to thrive in years to come, we must do a better job of preparing healthcare professionals to lead effectively. Composed of insightful and thought-provoking essays on the key facets of leadership, this book is designed to meet the needs of several important constituencies, including educators of health professionals who wish to incorporate leadership into their educational programs; health professional organizations seeking to enhance their members' leadership effectiveness, and individual health professionals who wish to embrace leadership in their personal and professional lives. This book represents a vital resource for health professionals who wish to enhance the quality of leadership in health professions education, practice, and professional development. In addition to regularly caring for patients, Richard Gunderman, MD PhD MPH brings to this discussion a wealth of personal experience in professional and organizational leadership.




Infertility


Book Description

This book explores the arguments, appeals, and narratives that have defined the meaning of infertility in the modern history of the United States and Europe. Throughout the last century, the inability of women to conceive children has been explained by discrepant views: that women are individually culpable for their own reproductive health problems, or that they require the intervention of medical experts to correct abnormalities. Using doctor-patient correspondence, oral histories, and contemporaneous popular and scientific news coverage, Robin Jensen parses the often thin rhetorical divide between moralization and medicalization, revealing how dominating explanations for infertility have emerged from seemingly competing narratives. Her longitudinal account illustrates the ways in which old arguments and appeals do not disappear in the light of new information, but instead reemerge at subsequent, often seemingly disconnected moments to combine and contend with new assertions. Tracing the transformation of language surrounding infertility from “barrenness” to “(in)fertility,” this rhetorical analysis both explicates how language was and is used to establish the concept of infertility and shows the implications these rhetorical constructions continue to have for individuals and the societies in which they live.




Methodologies for the Rhetoric of Health & Medicine


Book Description

Methodologies for the Rhetoric of Health & Medicine charts new methodological territories for rhetorical studies and the emerging field of the rhetoric of health and medicine. It advances the larger goal of differentiating the rhetoric of health and medicine as a distinct but pragmatically diverse area of study.




Methodologies for the Rhetoric of Health & Medicine


Book Description

This volume charts new methodological territories for rhetorical studies and the emerging field of the rhetoric of health and medicine. In offering an expanded, behind-the-scenes view of rhetorical methodologies, it advances the larger goal of differentiating the rhetoric of health and medicine as a distinct but pragmatically diverse area of study, while providing rhetoricians and allied scholars new ways to approach and explain their research. Collectively, the volume’s 16 chapters: Develop, through extended examples of research, creative theories and methodologies for studying and engaging medicine’s high-stakes practices. Provide thick descriptions of and heuristics for methodological invention and adaptation that meet the needs of needs of new and established researchers. Discuss approaches to researching health and medical rhetorics across a range of contexts (e.g., historical, transnational, socio-cultural, institutional) and about a range of ethical issues (e.g., agency, social justice, responsiveness).




Difficult Empathy and Rhetorical Encounters


Book Description

Difficult Empathy takes up the question of empathy as fundamentally a rhetorical concern, focusing on the ways we encounter and understand one another in what we read and write, hear and say. The book centres around the argument that empathy as a rhetorical event occurs not simply in the minds of individuals but as a product of the rhetorical situations, practices, cultures, and values in which we engage. Rather than identifying empathy as a cure-all, or jettisoning the concept altogether, the author acknowledges empathy’s potential as well as its limitations by focusing on what makes empathy a hard and ultimately worthwhile practice. This nuanced and original study will interest scholars working at the intersection of rhetoric and composition with empathy, as well as those studying empathy in fields such as critical and cultural theory, politics, media analysis, social psychology, and the cognitive humanities.




Language and Power on the Rhetorical Stage


Book Description

Through a fusion of narrative and analysis, Language and Power on the Rhetorical Stage examines how theater can enact critical discourse analysis, and how micro-instances of iniquitous language use have been politically and historically reiterated to oppress and deny equal rights to marginalized groups of people. Drawing from Aristophanes' rhetorical plays as a template for rhetoric in action, the author poses the stage as a rhetorical site whereby we can observe, see, and feel 20th-century rhetorical theories of the body. Using critical discourse analysis and Judith Butler’s theories of the performative body as a methodological and analytical lens, the book explores how a handful of American plays in the latter part of the 20th century – the works of Tony Kushner, Suzan Lori-Parks, and John Cameron Mitchell, among others – use rhetoric in order to perform and challenge marginalizing language about groups who are not offered center stage in public and political spheres. This innovative study initiates a conversation long overdue between scholars in rhetorical and performance studies; as such, it will be essential reading for academic researchers and graduate students in the areas of rhetorical studies, performance studies, theatre studies, and critical discourse analysis.




Sacred Rhetorical Education in 19th Century America


Book Description

This book offers new insight into the ways rhetorical educators’ religious motives influenced the shape of nineteenth-century rhetorical education and invites scholars of writing and rhetoric to consider what the study of religiously-animated pedagogies might reveal about rhetorical education itself. The author studies the rhetorical pedagogy of Austin Phelps, the prominent preacher and professor of sacred rhetoric at Andover Theological Seminary, and his theologically-motivated adaptation of rhetorical education to fit the exigencies of preachers at the first graduate seminary in the United States. In disclosing how Phelps was guided by his Christian motives, the book offers a thorough examination of how professional rhetoric was taught, learned, and practiced in nineteenth-century America. It also provides an enriched understanding of rhetorical theories and pedagogies in American seminaries, and contributes deepened awareness of the ways religious motives can function as resources that enable the reshaping of rhetorical theory and pedagogy in generative ways. Exploring the implications of Phelps’s rhetorical theory and pedagogy for future studies of religious rhetoric, histories of rhetorical education, and twenty-first century writing pedagogy,this book will be essential reading for scholars and students of rhetoric, education, American history, religious education, and writing studies.