Rhetoric of Health and Medicine
202 articlesMay 2018
-
Abstract
We examined medico-legal collaboration regarding dangerous sex offenders where state legislators have adopted statutes that determine the criteria for commitment to and discharge from civil commitment programs. The application of these statutes relies on medical diagnoses of pathologies such as paraphilia, anti-social personality disorder, and pedophilia along with prognoses for cure or recidivism. In our study, we examined court opinions from commitment hearings and observed a trial in federal court on the constitutionality of these commitments. We found that one result of this medico-legal collaboration is the marginalization or othering of sex offenders by essentializing, dividing, shaming, and impeaching them. We also found that this group attempted to resist othering by rhetorical strategies such as providing evidence of change in character, distinction within the othered group, and proof of internal controls over unacceptable impulses. Finally, we discovered that such othering relies heavily on medical expertise, even though some medical practitioners may disagree with, or be hesitant in, their roles in this medico-legal collaboration.
-
Abstract
This article extends Keränen’s (2010) application of the concept of autopoiesis, or self-generation, to rhetoric by examining how arguments about wellness and natural health self-generate in public discourse. The article analyzes 20 qualitative interviews on what it means in contemporary culture to be “well”—how wellness differs from illness, how it is distinct from health, and how it can be maintained and enhanced. The analysis shows that wellness discourse is predicated on the entanglement of seemingly opposed logics of restoration and enhancement: those who seek wellness through dietary supplements and natural health products seek simultaneously to restore their bodies, perceived as malfunctioning, to prior states of ideal health and well-being, and to enhance their bodies by optimizing bodily processes to be “better than well” (Elliott, 2003). The fusing of these two logics creates an essentially closed rhetorical system in which wellness is always a moving target.