Instructor: Judy Segal
Section: 001
Term: 2
Meets: MWF 11:00am-12:00pm
The central question for rhetorical study is, “In this (particular) situation, who is persuading whom of what—and what are the means of persuasion?” The starting point for the question is the understanding that we are, all of us, engaged in acts of persuasion all the time—even if all we mean to do is, as rhetorician Kenneth Burke says, “direct the attention” of an audience.
The notion of pervasive persuasion, though, is complicated when we consider the realms of science and medicine, and when discourse is taking place in spaces we typically don’t think of as rhetorical: for example, in the pages of scientific journals, in laboratories, in working groups tasked with arriving at diagnostic categories, in consulting rooms of hospitals.
This course looks at questions of persuasion in contemporary science and medicine. At the centre of the course is a series of readings on scientific and medical rhetoric—both internal (as professionals interact with each other) and external (as professionals, directly or indirectly, interact with the public).
Given the prevalence of health topics in public discourse currently, we will be especially interested in the rhetoric of health and medicine. We will consider, for example, questions like these: “What is the process of classification by which some states/conditions become diseases and others do not?”, “What are the means, and what are the effects, of pharmaceutical advertising?”, “How has the Internet helped to shape the contemporary health subject?”, and “How does public discourse on health affect the personal experience of illness?”
Through our inquiry, we will specify how the rhetorical critic contributes to interdisciplinary Science and Medicine Studies.
Note: English 309 requires no special preparation in rhetorical theory or in science and medicine.
Required Reading:
All course readings are either articles and book chapters accessible online, or book chapters/excerpts collected in a course-materials packet or made available as PDF’s. Here is a sampling of those readings:
- Burke, Kenneth. “Terministic Screens.” In Gusfield, ed., On Symbols and Society (1989)
- Cohn, Carol. “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (1987)
- Conrad, Peter and Valerie Leiter. “From Lydia Pinkham to Queen Levitra: Direct-to-Consumer Advertising and Medicalisation. Sociology of Health and Illness (2008)
- Emmons, Kimberly. “Depression as a Rhetorical Illness.” In Black Dogs and Blue Words (2010)
- Gilbert, Nigel and Mulkay, Michael. Opening Pandora’s Box: A Sociological Analysis of Scientists’ Discourse (1984)
- Healy, David. “Medicine and the Marketers.” In Pharmageddon (2012)
- Gronnvoll, Marita and Jamie Landau, “From Viruses to Russian Roulette to Dance: A Rhetorical Critique and Creation of Genetic Metaphors.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly (2010)
- McCarthy, Lucille and Joan Gerring, “Revising Psychiatry’s Charter Document DSM-IV. Written Communication (1994)
- Meldrum, Marcia. “The Prescription as Stigma: Opioid Pain Relievers and the Long Walk to the Pharmacy Counter.” In Metzl and Kirkland, eds., Prescribed: Writing, Filling, Using, and Abusing the Prescription in Modern America (2012)
- Segal, Judy. “Internet Health and the 21st-Century Patient.” Written Communication (2009)
- Watters, Ethan. “The Rise of Anorexia in Hong Kong.” In Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche (2010)
Course Requirements:
Term work: short assignments and a midterm – 25%
Term paper (6-7 pages) – 25%
Final examination – 35%
Class participation – 15%
Register here: https://courses.students.ubc.ca/cs/main?pname=subjarea&tname=subjareas&req=5&dept=ENGL&course=309§ion=001
