Department of Communication, University of Utah.
Health Commun. 2021 Mar;36(3):272-279. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2019.1673951. Epub 2019 Oct 3.
Medicalization theory aims to delineate how and why non-medical issues become demarcated within the realm of medical jurisdiction. The theory postulates that medicalization is marked by diagnostic naming, medical expertise, technological standardization and the de-contextualization of experiential knowledge, and that it is driven by popular media and lay discourse as much as by the communication of health professionals and medical institutions. Although medicalization has been recognized as an inherently rhetorical act, medicalization theory does not attend to the specific communicative means undergirding its orchestration. Drawing from medicalized coverage of the phrase "brain chemistry" ( = 71), we address this theoretical aperture, identifying through rhetorical analysis the most common communicative devices that emerged across 70 years of coverage and three distinct diagnoses (i.e., mental illness, addiction and overweight/obesity). Our findings reveal three central rhetorical means through which medicalization is communicated including mechanical metaphor, pedagogy of contrast, and moral enthymeme. By tracing content across time, the current study explicates the communicative infrastructure that gives rise to medicalization, thereby extending the literature from questions of medicalization occurs and its content is to it is conveyed and imparted.
医学化理论旨在描述非医学问题如何以及为何被划定在医学管辖范围内。该理论假设，医学化的标志是诊断命名、医学专业知识、技术标准化以及经验知识的去情境化，并且它是由大众媒体和外行话语驱动的，就像由卫生专业人员和医疗机构的交流驱动的一样。尽管医学化已被认为是一种内在的修辞行为，但医学化理论并没有关注支持其编排的具体交际手段。通过对短语“大脑化学”的医学化报道（=71），我们解决了这一理论上的空白，通过修辞分析确定了在 70 年的报道和三个不同的诊断（即精神疾病、成瘾和超重/肥胖）中出现的最常见的交际手段。我们的研究结果揭示了三种通过医学化传达的核心修辞手段，包括机械隐喻、对比教育学和道德省略三段论。通过跨时间追踪内容，本研究阐明了导致医学化的交际基础，从而将文献从医学化发生的问题和其内容扩展到它是如何传达和传授的问题。
