W. H. R. Rivers Prize Essay (1988): Fracturing the Language of Biomedicine: The Speech Play of U.S. Physicians

Abstract

Play with the professional language of biomedicine is endemic in American hospitals. In this article 1 present a typology of such speech play forms and suggest that biomedical speech play represents an alternative biomedical voice distinct from both that of the lifeworld and that of objective, scientific biomedicine. The voice that speaks through biomedical speech play embodies social and emotional concerns that are devalued in the professional ideology of biomedicine but that cannot be ignored by biomedical practitioners. Biomedical speech play thus presents an alternative (and necessary) reconstruction of biomedical reality.

“Reaching Out to the People”: The Cultural Production of Mental Health Professionalism in the South Indian Public Sphere

“…Scholars of medical discourse have documented the ways health professionals switch speech genres and registers in accordance with audience and context (Burson‐Tolpin ; Coombs et al ; Hsu ; Mattingly ). While the vast majority of this literature focuses on clinical and other institutional settings, case studies presented here have drawn our attention instead to the rhetorical and performative strategies of health professionals in the public sphere.…”

​​The Butt of the Joke​: Humour and Queer Care at an Anal Dysplasia Clinic

“…Anthropology lacks a significant examination of the interactions of health, humour, and medicine (cf. Burson-Tolpin 1988;Evans 2009;Livingston 2012;Wright 2018), while sociological research on humour in clinical contexts dates to the mid-20th century (Coser 1959(Coser , 1960Emerson 1963). Social theory around humour has mostly been published in social science or humanities venues rather than medical journals, and it tends to focus on psychological, psychometric, or communicative issues.…”

Improving Pain Management Communication: How Patients Understand the Terms “Opioid” and “Narcotic”

“…7 A rich range of literature has explored the importance of language in medical practice, including the use of euphemism and technical terminology in doctor-patient communication. [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] Such work has shown how language choice can influence both the affective and instrumental dimensions of clinical interactions, and thus may impact key outcomes linked to doctor-patient communication, including patient satisfaction and adherence. 13 One useful step in beginning to unravel these complex communicative processes in pain management is to explore the specific meanings and associations of key pain-related terms.…”