Discourse analysis is the study of the use of language. This includes many forms including verbal and written. The different forms of discourse analysis include studying the communication techniques that participants choose to use and the reasons why they choose them as well as studying the social and cultural context of conversations and language. It is a research method used to provide an understanding of the symbolic meaning of language.
http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.library.qmul.ac.uk/science/article/pii/S027795361000523X#
This paper looks at the medicalisation of “tall girls” and reports on a discourse analysis of the medical literature on treatment of tall girls between the 1950s and 1990s, when this treatment was at its peak. The aim of the paper was to explore the impact of language in the construction of the “tall girl” as a medical concept. Although the use of synthetic oestrogen to reduce the height of adolescent girls is now a rarely used medical intervention it is still available in Australia, France and the USA.
The paper found that clinicians drew on three linguistic repertoires that simultaneously pathologise tall women, introduce notions of risks associated with their height and provide the rationale for treatment as the restoration of femininity.
The findings are said to support Foucault’s argument that clinicians have been granted an authoritative gaze, the power to define what constitutes a clinical sign and the institutional license to diagnose pathology or establish deviance.
The paper concluded that with only anecdotal evidence of psychological harm associated with tall stature in women, and no long-term studies of either effectiveness or benefit, clinicians throughout five decades persuaded themselves and their patients that tall stature required therapeutic intervention and that the treatment of tall girls with high dose oestrogen in the absence of pathology must be viewed as the medicalisation of a normal physical attribute adversely related to social constructions of gender.
This paper helped me to really understand the huge impact that the “word of a clinician” can have on patients. In the context of all the medical knowledge they have, doctors convey a certain amount of authority on certain topics when they communicate with patients. With this comes a responsibility to think about and analyse the best ways to use language and communication in order to provide the best care for the patient.
At the end of the paper they say: one should not under-estimate the power of this discourse in developing theory, corroborating social values and directing clinical practice, as the human body is always treated as an image of society. I took this to mean: the manner or way you communicate with a patient is almost as important as what you are communicating.
