‘I think Danish patients would feel the same’: Counter-discourses emerging in the Danish health sector

Authors

  • Inger Lassen Aalborg University
  • Jeanne Strunck Aalborg University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/cam.v8i3.223

Keywords:

Ethnicity, culture, health communication, topoi, mitigation

Abstract

This article argues that the discourse of culture and ethnicity that has so far been found to dominate health sector communication about ethnic minority patients is being challenged by voices indicating alternative ways of talking about the cultural meeting. This assumption is corroborated by data from interviews with nurses, who construct themselves discursively as members of a nursing profession divided between institutional concerns and concerns about the individual needs of patients. In a ward with many ethnic minority patients these concerns will invariably invite reflections on the nature and significance of culture, and to what extent cultural difference is a meaningful concept in nursing practice, and our results have pointed to a counter-discourse emerging in part of the Danish health sector. The analysis presented here is based on data from a project in which we explore how health professionals and ethnic minority patients talk about culture in a specific Danish hospital ward and how this may have implications for staff-patient relationships. Our theoretical and methodological approach is mainly Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 1992 [1999]; van Dijk 2008; Reisigl & Wodak 2001).

Author Biographies

  • Inger Lassen, Aalborg University
    Inger Lassen received her Ph.D. in discourse in professional settings from Aalborg University, Denmark and is currently professor at Aalborg University and director of the doctoral programme Discourse and Contemporary Culture. Her publications include a monograph on stylistics, an edited anthology on Image and Identity, and an edited anthology on Gender (all published by Benjamins). She has published articles in international journals such as Document Design, Discourse Studies, Critical Discourse Studies and Risk Research.
  • Jeanne Strunck, Aalborg University
    Jeanne Strunck received her Ph.D. in Intercultural communication and linguistics at Aalborg University, Denmark, and is an associate professor in discourse, rhetoric and organizational communication at Aalborg University. Her research interests are health communication and gender and career. She is the coordinator of the Centre for Health Communication www.healthcom.aau.dk which includes several different departments and disciplines within communication in the healthcare sector.

Published

2012-06-29

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Lassen, I., & Strunck, J. (2012). ‘I think Danish patients would feel the same’: Counter-discourses emerging in the Danish health sector. Communication and Medicine, 8(3), 223-233. https://doi.org/10.1558/cam.v8i3.223

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