Instructor: James M. Wilce, Ph.D.
Office hours: 12:30-1:30 MW, 11-12 Th. Call for appointments outside of those hours.
Office location: Anthropology (Bldg. 60) Rm. 211
Phone: (520) 523-2729
Course prerequisites: Senior or graduate standing, or consent of instructor.
Course description and theoretical overview:

This seminar uses methods from medical discourse analysis and anthropology to get at the interrelationships between language, power, and medicine, focusing on five issues in health communication: 1) The therapeutic potential of medical communication and the power of language in healing encounters: symbolic healing, talk therapies, etc. We will also ask early in the course whether the primary function of "healing" is to deal with deviance. 2) The problematics of medical interaction: Is the asymmetry of discursive power in the practitioner-patient relationship necessary? Or is physician-patient communication in the U.S. sick? 3) The endogenous health impact of language: Evidence pointing to immunological impact of emotional writing and speech will be examined through the psychoneuroimmunological research of Pennebaker and his colleagues. Catharsis is a Western folk ideal with a long history; we will compare it with non-Western theories of the dangers of expressing negative emotion. 4) Sick speech, speech as a symptom: Researchers have found in depressive, psychotic, and other patients linguistic evidence of what they consider sickness. The seminar will consider this evidence. We will also ask if the speech of "schizophrenics" is beyond comprehension and consider approaches that claim labels are the source rather than a reflection of sick behavior. 5) Finally, we will analyze the language of biomedicine itself, particularly the efficacious introduction of new terms that legitimate certain phenomena—diseases, immune entities, and cures, for example— as "real."

Texts:

A) Final Paper (25% of total grade) (oral presentation of paper = 5%)

The final paper will combine your own observations and experiences of "medicine" (loosely defined as in the readings) with a critical use of the readings. It should speak to one of the weekly reading topics in particular. If the paper centers on newly collected data, requiring the taping of a "medical" event, permission from patient, practitioner, and the Institutional Review Board will need to be sought in the second week of the semester. That choice of topic is yours; it is not required. Other papers will rise to a different challenge—a thorough rethinking of one of the theoretical models/topics explored in this course. All papers should include a transcript of some medical encounter, prepared in accordance with one of the transcript forms in your readings (especially CP or ET), and should make the analysis of the transcribed encounter the center. (Theory-oriented papers can use transcripts from the published sources which they are critiquing.) The phenomenon in focus in the transcript and the theoretical model and analytic method used to interpret the transcript should reflect intimate knowledge of the readings, again focusing on one week’s readings in particular.

You will present your topic orally to the seminar during Reading Week.

B) Regular assignments: (70% of total grade). (For assignment details, see below, pp. 5-6.)

1) In order to prepare you to write an appropriate final paper, you should begin this week. Since the paper should include your own "ethnographic" insights into, i.e. should be built on your own "participant-observation" of, "medical" events, start next week by writing a 1-2 page typed ethnographic "journal entry." You could write about any roughly "medical" complaint you hear from family or roommates, or certainly a medical encounter of your own if you happen to see a practitioner. In the fourth week, based on your experiences, thoughts, and readings for this course (especially on familiarizing yourself with the topics throughout the syllabus), you should submit a paragraph on a possible topic for your final paper. An outline of your paper is due in week 10. Together, these small writings account for one tenth (10%) of your final grade.

2) Analysis of readings (40%):

About 100 pages of readings (including articles and books) are assigned each week. Learn to read for main arguments more than detail, and compare authors’ arguments against each other in your own critical synthesis. All readings discussed before the due date of each paper can be included as cumulative insight, but papers should focus on readings discussed in the previous two weeks. Papers will be due every other week but will cover two weeks’ worth of readings, not just the most recent week’s readings. For more guidance, see the final pages of this syllabus.

3) Participation in discussion (20%): Everyone is expected to have read the assigned chapters/papers enough to participate in class. That does not mean perfect comprehension-- we learn together. Students are required to participate each week by putting before us thoughtful questions regarding the readings or by sharing their insights in response to others’ questions/comments. Individuals will be assigned particular responsibility to help the discussion of certain assigned pages.

SCHEDULE OF TOPICS AND READINGS

Week One Introductions; Anthropological theories of language and social action

ET, ch. 13

20+23+50+10=103

Week Fifteen Oral presentations

Week Sixteen

Final paper due

Guide to Writing Critical Reading Analyses

You will be writing critical reflections on the cumulative readings and discussions. They will be due every other week, 3- 4 pages in length, and will integrate and critically evaluate the perspectives offered in the readings. Here’s another way of saying this: the aim of these papers is to encourage synthetic, integrative, critical reflection on the readings Your papers should reflect an accurate sense of the main argument of each reading and its unique perspective.

In presenting a reading in class and in writing these papers, prepare a one sentence precis of each author’s argument before you actually write the integrative paper. Here’s an example: "Finkler argues that a focus on the doctor-patient relationship, even when the anthropologists studies Spiritualist healing, would be an ethnocentric projection of an issue relevant to our biomedical encounters." Compare the collected arguments of the authors whose work you are reflecting on for a given paper (two weeks’ worth usually; the first paper will be an exception). Taking the Finkler example, you might use her notion of "dramaturgy" to set up a paragraph in which you contrast Finkler’s position with Levi-Strauss’s and Laderman’s. Your paper should then not shift paragraph by paragraph from author to author. Rather, you should organize it by topics which your own insightful vision sees in as you compare your one-sentence argument-summations (topics like "dramaturgy in the doctor-patient encounter").

As the semester progresses, your papers can take backward glances at readings you will have analyzed in your previous papers. Papers can be somewhat cumulative in that sense, though I encourage you to spend you limited 4 pages or so mostly on the two weeks of readings and discussion which you have not previously analyzed. I am looking for evidence that you have integrated, compared and contrasted perspectives. Papers longer than 5 pages are NOT encouraged. Be concise.

An absence can throw you off seriously. If you must miss class, contact someone about discussion notes, papers due, etc.

Guidelines for oral presentations on assigned readings

1. Each class session will consist of a group discussion based on a collection of readings. You are required to attend each class having read the assigned readings and being ready to discuss them. You will find it helpful to take notes on the readings and bring them with you to class.

2. You will be responsible for co-facilitating some of the class discussions. Each required reading will be assigned to at least one student who will be expected to lead the discussion on it. In preparing for the discussions you will facilitate, try not to spend too much time summarizing the readings, but do so in enough detail to orient the group. In addition, you should formulate a series of questions and comments to stimulate discussion using the following guidelines:

What is the reading about? (should take up about half of your presentation)

What are the broader issues that it seeks to address?

What underlying assumptions-- theoretical or otherwise-- does the author make?

What are the strengths of the argument?

What are its weaknesses or limitations? What considerations has the author failed to take into account?

What have you learned? What more would you now like to know on the topic?

To what related material-- in this class, other classes, your own lives-- does the material relate? Does it help you more clearly understand dynamics or patterns that exist in this society or any others?

Look for common or contrasting threads that run through each week’s readings. Consider the questions that they seek to address as a unit.

Students not leading the discussions that particular week should try to keep these same questions in mind. Remember, the quality of any seminar depends mostly on how well participants prepare prior to coming to class. This involves not only reading the assigned materials but also thinking critically about the issues that they raise.
 
 
 
 
 

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