‘You’ll never hear them say “you’re cured”’: the language of tragedy in cancer care

Abstract

Young women diagnosed with advanced breast cancer live with an illness that currently cannot be cured. There are many discourses, or ways of seeing and speaking about the world, that these young women draw upon as they try and make sense of their illness. This article explores several of these discourses, in particular the discourse of tragedy, as it weaves its way through the professional and lay press and through interview accounts of young women living with advanced disease. Using a critical form of textual analysis, I trace the discourse of tragedy through the Australian newsprint media in the period between 1996 and 2000, through interviews with 12 young women with advanced breast cancer and into the ‘expert’ literature. I argue that the ‘expert’ discourse of tragedy positions these young women in unhelpful ways making it very difficult for them to talk of suffering and survival in the midst of living with the real possibility of dying before their time, often leaving children to grow up without them.

Key Words:

• young women
• advanced breast cancer
• tragedy
• discourse analysis