Mapping the Terrain: Examining the Conditions for Alignment Between the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine and the Medical Humanities

ABSTRACT

This article offers an empirical study of literature in the rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM) and the medical humanities (MH). Article traces the topics, funding mechanisms, research methods, theoretical frameworks, evidence types, audience, discourse arrangement patterns, and action orientation that constitute the scholarship in the sample to offer a landscape of the current state of RHM and the MH. Findings can be leveraged to assess the potential for alignment between these fields for future research.

KEYWORDS:

• Health/medical communication
• textual analysis

Notes

1. A copy of our code book can be found at http://www.larduser.net.

2. Here the authors classify rhetorical methods as a qualitative method even though this is not a universally shared perspective.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark A. Hannah

Mark A. Hannah is an assistant professor in the Department of English at Arizona State University. His research explores rhetorics of cross-disciplinarity, specifically on developing strategies that foster technical and professional communicators’ capacity to work successfully across professional boundaries. His work has appeared in Nature, Technical Communication, Technical Communication Quarterly, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Communication Design Quarterly, Connexions International Professional Communication Journal, Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, International Journal of Business Communication, Programmatic Perspectives, College Composition and Communication, and chapters in edited collections.

Lora Arduser

Lora Arduser is an associate professor and the director of the Professional Writing program at the University of Cincinnati. Her research is situated in the rhetoric of health and medicine and focuses on agency, particularly agency for marginalized groups, and the intersection of discourse about health and technology. Her book, Living Chronic: Agency and Expertise in the Rhetoric of Diabetes, was published by The Ohio State University Press in 2017. Her work also has been published in Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Computers and Composition, Women’s Studies in Communication, Narrative Inquiry, The Diabetes Educator, and the Journal of Appalachian Studies.