Therapeutic Misconceptions: When the Voices of Caring and Research Are Misconstrued as the Voice of Curing

Abstract

Research on doctor-patient communication has characterized such interactions as being asymmetrical. The present article tries to shift emphasis away from the different orientations individuals bring to the communicative setting and attempts to highlight the different orientations ("voices") within a given individual. We draw on an in-depth analysis of discourse between a 2 l-year-old man who can be ascribed the roles of both patient and potential research subject and an interviewer who acts in both the role of medical staff and researcher. Focusing our analysis on a limited number of linguistic forms (pronouns and demonstratives), it is argued that the use of the same form for different referents signals a conflation of two voices—the voice of health care ("caring") and the voice of "research." Furthermore, we argue that the voice of research is most likely to be interpreted by the patient/research subject within the framework of curing. As such, the present article promotes a shift in emphasis from different institutional—and as such often assumed to be preexisting—orientations between the communicating parties to differing orientations within the individual that cannot help but be misconstrued in terms of the curing voice. Our conclusion focuses on the ethical and discourse analytic implications of analyzing voices in a discussion.