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The Diabetes Educator

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Qualitative Health Research
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Claiming Power in the Medical Encounter: The Whirlpool Discourse

Nancy Ainsworth-Vaughn

Department of English at Michigan State University

In this article ethnographic discourse analysis was used to identify some major ways a cancer patient and her oncologist claim power in a medical encounter. The primary discourse strategies participants used to claim power were interruptions, questions, topic control, and symbolic ways of constituting social identity. Both participants used these discourse strategies; the patient mitigated her claims to power, constructing deference. The author suggests that deference does not necessarily imply passivity. These discourse strategies are placed within the context of a complex theory of power that looks beyond the boundaries of discourse structure, to power over one's own actions and over treatment. Thus an overview is provided of multiple ways power can be constructed in the medical encounter, both through discourse strategies and through actions uncapturable in tens of discourse structure.

Qualitative Health Research, Vol. 5, No. 3, 270-291 (1995)
DOI: 10.1177/104973239500500302
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