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In:Narrative Matters in Medical Contexts across Disciplines
Edited by Franziska Gygax and Miriam A. Locher
[Studies in Narrative 20] 2015
► pp. 117–140

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“I would suggest you tell this ^^^ to your doctor”

Online narrative problem-solving regarding face-to-face doctor-patient interaction about body weight

Published online: 13 March 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/sin.20.07gor
I use computer-mediated discourse analysis (Herring, 2004) to investigate one online weight-loss discussion board thread that revolves around medical metadiscourse – an original poster’s depiction of a face-to-face interaction in which a doctor made an unwelcome comment about her weight. Extending research on “small stories” (e.g. Georgakopoulou, 2007) and narrative problem-solving (Ochs, Smith and Taylor, 1989), I demonstrate how participants co-create a small story that works through the original poster’s dilemma – how she should interpret and react to what happened. I identify six intertextual linking strategies that accomplish this – posing information-seeking questions, paraphrasing and reframing, creating “constructed dialogue” (Tannen, 2007), using the board’s quotation function, pointing (such as through the “^” symbols in this chapter’s title), and advice-giving – while also showing how meaning-making in doctor-patient interactions extends beyond medical encounters themselves to online contexts. Further, analysis of the posts’ contents reveals what Sarangi (in press) calls a “role responsibility framework” for medical care: Participants attribute responsibility for the problematic encounter to both the doctor and patient/original poster.
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