Collaborative Paths and Contexts: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Rhetoric of Medical and Health Policy

• Author: Bonnie Stabile,Heidi Y. Lawrence
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.316
• Published date: 01 December 2019
• Date: 01 December 2019

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doi: 10.1002/wmh3.316

© 2019 Policy Studies Organization

Editorial

Collaborative Paths and Contexts: An Introduction to the

Special Issue on Rhetoric of Medical and Health Policy

Heidi Y. Lawrence and Bonnie Stabile

Rhetoric and policy are in many ways complementary disciplines. Rhetoric, as

the art of civic discourse, is inherently concerned with the questions and disputes of

the public sphere. Rooted in deliberative, democratic traditions of the classical era,

rhetoric is, at its origin, the practice of understanding how language makeschange in

the world—arguing for and against new laws, shaping outcomes of public debates,

and articulating cultural values and mores. The subdiscipline of the rhetorics of

health and medicine (RHM), then, follows questions about language use as it relates

to medical spaces, health practices, and related decision making. RHM is most

succinctly defined by Amy Reed, who describes it as work that “examines language

about health and medicine as produced by rhetors with limited agency; used by

particular audiences, who may or may not share the intentions, values, beliefs, or

practices of the rhetor; and reflecting and constituting ideology”(Reed, 2018, p. 191).

Following from this definition, RHM work has a long tradition of studying a wide

rangeofpubliccommunicationtoolsandpracticesasawayofunderstandinghow

language mediates health and medical experiences. Work in this field has studied how

medical practices and discourses characterize and shape physicians’perceptions of their

patients and their diseases (Keränen, 2010; Scott, 2014; Segal, 2008); how communication

practices shape patient knowledge about diagnosis and prognosis (Barton, 2004; Teston,

); the roles that medical practices at various historic moments (from lobotomy to genetic

testing)play in patient lives and society (Happe, 2016; Johnson, 2015; Pender, 2018);and

how public controversies impact medicine, health, and science (Ceccarelli, 2011; Ko-

lodziejski, 2014; Lawrence, Hausman, & Dannenberg, 2014). Methodologically and

theoretically, RHM relies primarily on qualitative research and hermeneutic,

interpretative approaches to the texts, discourses, and artifacts under study.

Scholarship in policy pairs productively with the ends of RHM, potentially

extending rhetorical analyses into real‐world acts and implications. Goals of research in

policy include establishing and assessing the social and material effects of policies as

they impact populations; understanding historic precedents and trajectories of policy

interventions; and examining how policies may create inequitable outcomes for

particular groups, all with a goal of improving health outcomes and the public’shealth.