Rhetoric Of Medicine Research Articles

Recuperative Ethos and Agile Epistemologies: Toward a Vernacular Engagement with Mental Illness Ontologies

This essay uses data from a field-based study to describe the everyday rhetorical performances through which ethos is established when the orator’s credibility has been compromised by stigma born of chronic mental illness. These strategies, called “recuperative ethos,” include displays of astuteness, references to strong human connections, and appeals to religious topoi. Further, the essay describes innovative rhetorical performances, called “agile epistemologies,” which include logical contradiction, metonymic parallels, enthymemes, and expansive views on human agency. Taken together, these terms use the voices and experiences of mentally ill participants to add important insight into the rhetoric of mental healthcare and the rhetoric of medicine, health, and wellness.

Occult Genres and the Certification of Madness in a 19th-Century Lunatic Asylum

Using archival admissions records and case histories of patients at a British asylum from the 1860s to the 1870s, the authors examine the medical certification process leading to the asylum confinement of individuals judged to be “of unsound mind.” These institutional texts are, the authors suggest, “occult genres” that function as complex acts of argumentation, whose illocutionary force depends on the success of their felicity conditions. Through the lens of Austin’s concept of “uptake,” the authors analyze the role of medical certification in the admissions history of two patients at Ticehurst House Asylum in the 1860s-1870s. The authors contend that historical genre analysis plays an important role in the rhetoric of medicine and health, shedding light on the performative power of medical certification, an act essential to the practice of psychiatry.

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Agency and the Rhetoric of Medicine: Biomedical Brain Scans and the Ontology of Fibromyalgia

Recent agency scholarship has provided compelling accounts of how individuals can strategically occupy authoritative positions, in order to instantiate change. This article explores the discursive mechanisms of this type of agency in the legitimization of disease. Drawing on ethnographic research, this article investigates how a non-human agent (brain scans) contributed to fibromyalgia's acceptance within the highly regulated discourses of western biomedicine.

Review: Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine, by Judy Z.Segal

Review: Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine, by Judy Z.Segal

Book Review: Segal, Judy Z. (2005). Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press

Book Review: Segal, Judy Z. (2005). Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press

Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine by Judy Z. Segal

Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine by Judy Z. Segal

The rhetoric of medicine: Lord Herbert's and Thomas Carew's poems of green-sickness.

The rhetoric of medicine: Lord Herbert's and Thomas Carew's poems of green-sickness.