“Medical Discourse” in Anthropological Context: Views of Language and Power

Abstract

Editor's Note: Just a year ago, in MAQ 2(2), we published a set of articles by authors who in one way or another used the concept of discourse in their analysis. In my introduction to that issue I promised some time in the future to publish a review article on the subject by a linguistic anthropologist. From my own reading of people like Shuy, Cassell, Labov, Cicourel, and Foucault, it was obvious that though these authors were all analyzing some form of discourse, the purposes and methods of their work were sufficiently different to make me wonder if there was any common ground among them and whether some fruitful research ideas, theoretical and/or applied, might not emerge from considering them comparatively (along with other relevant authors and trends). This notion led me to ask Joel Kuipers if he would consider preparing such a review. I picked Joel, a Yale-trained linguistic anthropologist, for the task because I knew that his work on recorded texts of Weyewa healing rituals was leading him to think more broadly and deeply about medical discourse. I commend and thank him for the following article, which I think many willfind useful.