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In Western societies, human existence and illness are mostly constructed from the perspective of mind-body dualism: body and mind are considered to function independently, and the body/the physical as primary and more real. Research shows, however, that mind-body dualism is no longer tenable, especially in healthcare contexts. This led to the rise the biopsychosocial model, in which bodily experiences, including illness, are seen an interplay of the physical and the psychological, and the social. This model is the current gold standard for treating chronic pain. As these perspectives on the body and illness are potentially conflicting, and discursively constructed, this paper examines whether they are a source of misalignment in interactions between chronic pain patients and their doctors in a pain clinic. The analysis shows these perspectives indeed lead to misalignment, for instance when discussing the relevance of psychotherapy, and lead to intricate uses of argumentative resources to account for the differing perspectives on (the treatment of) pain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With this study protocol, we present our approach to collaboratively coding metaphors in medical consultations, using the qualitative analysis software package ATLAS.ti. This project came with a number of challenges but also yielded a coded data set that was rich and versatile, and allowed for a wide array of analyses. We therefore believe it can be of interest to share the details of the process, to (1) provide an hands-on approach to qualitative, collaborative (metaphor) coding, and (2) contribute to our understanding and the advancement of qualitative methods in relation to coding metaphors, and coding more generally. The protocol can be of interest for researchers interested in collaborative qualitative coding, of metaphors or other (linguistic) units, using software. We specifically describe how we set up our initial coding system, and how we further developed it inductively; how we dealt with the fuzziness of metaphors; how we approach cleaning between coding rounds; how we divided work over and collaborated as a team of three coders with different but related cultural and linguistic backgrounds; how we structured our documentation and logbook. We then discuss how this set of guidelines complements the theoretical literature and more general guidelines on (metaphor) coding, and on reliability and validity in qualitative research. We will reflect on both a number of logistic and practical issues, as well as methodological and empirical challenges, and advantages and disadvantages of our approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The empirical papers in this special issue show that how knowledge is made relevant and negotiated in interaction is a complex matter. Traditionally, research on knowledge conceptualizes knowledge as being distributed across patients and health care providers, who respectively have access to experiential knowledge and medical knowledge of illness. In this view, both forms of knowledge then need to be transferred from one party to the other. However, our contributions show that interactions are more complex in many ways. First of all, there are more actors involved in medical interaction, such as translators and family members, who each uniquely contribute to what knowledge is constructed and how. Secondly, the forms and domains of knowledge cannot be reduced to medical and experiential knowledge, but for instance also concern knowledge on how health care interactions are structured. Thirdly, knowledge is not only about informing the other party in interaction but is for instance also used to account for decisions or to seek alignment. In this contribution we explore how these insights can inform future research and how it can help deepen our understanding of patient centredness and shared decision making in health care communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses socialization processes in the interaction between two Belgian, Dutch-speaking sisters, aged 10 and 8, more specifically with regard to power dynamics and establishing the roles of socialization target and agent. Socialization is collaborative, but usually entails some division of roles, which is intricately linked to power dynamics. Consequently, socialization efforts, and the socialization roles of target and agent, can be discarded or contested as part of these power dynamics. The analysis shows that socialization efforts between the sisters are often accepted, but also regularly contested and resisted. Moreover, the data indicates that roles and goals of some socialization efforts are so unclear that the boundaries between socialization efforts and interactional actions that aim to gain control become blurred. In conclusion, socialization must not only be considered in terms of its learning potential, but also as a power struggle with intricate and complex negotiation dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines women's magazine journalists' discourses and ideologies of health, agency and science, and how these are shaped by journalists' attitudes to health, and views on the magazine and readership. Health coverage has grown, and impacts behaviour, governmental policy and societal notions of health. Consequently, it is essential to understand how journalists construct notions of health, and how these notions feed into production processes. To examine the journalists' discourses and ideologies on health, eight research interviews were analysed. The analysis shows that journalists construct health as a subjective, dynamic experience of feeling well, in which patients' individual agency is central. This is consolidated by their view on readers as intelligent and independent, who read health content to become more well-informed. This neo-liberal view on health and agency leads to perspectives in which scientific expertise as no longer seen the only source of expertise to self-manage health, but as part of a bigger information landscape which includes pseudo-scientific information. This, in turn, is consolidated by ideas on open-minded journalism: good journalists are non-biased, consider all expertise, and let intelligent readers decide what is relevant knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many countries, including Belgium and the Netherlands, dependence on benzodiazepines (BZDs) is a medical and social issue, and, for long-term users who want to taper off, doing so remains a personal challenge. For these users, online contexts such as forums can be a place to discuss this experience and look for practical and moral support among former users and fellow users trying to reduce or stop BZD use. This paper aims to shed light on the discourses of a Dutch-language benzodiazepine withdrawal forum, examining 133 forum threads (41,516 words). We take a corpus-based approach that combines frequency analyses with qualitative discourse analysis. We explore how the users extensively share lived, experiential knowledge of using and reducing medication and, in doing so, engage with domain-specific biomedical jargon. As such they discursively construct specialised expertise and a medical(ised), health professional-like expert identity, both in relation to their own situation, but also in interaction with other forum members, as advisors to each other. The forum thus not only serves as a site for emotional peer support, but also as a site for detailed informational support on tapering, which is traditionally offered by health professionals. This is especially pervasive, as many forum users also express indignation about the medical establishment and its lack of institutional knowledge support in the process of tapering off. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how health-related media content is produced by the editorial board of an infotainment TV show on food. Health-related news is on the rise, and impacts laypeople's health knowledge, their behaviour, the public agenda and governmental policy. At the same time, it is criticised for being inaccurate, badly framed and sensationalist. This is generally attributed to the difficulty of linearly 'translating' scientific findings into journalistic findings, which results in a collision between scientific and journalistic perspectives and practices. This paper questions the idea that producing health-related media content is just linear translation, and looks into how two current societal trends - the rise of healthism and soft news - shape the production process. Drawing on linguistic ethnographic data from fieldwork at the editorial board of the TV show, two case studies are analysed qualitatively and in depth to gain deeper insight into the complex dynamics of producing health-related media content. The data show that producing such content is indeed not a matter of simply translating biomedical science into a journalistic discourse, but of intense co-production of journalistic and scientific practices and, nowadays, also of coproduction with new, non-scientific pseudo-experts and pseudo-scientific practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how power dynamics between informants and field researchers shape ethnographic data construction, drawing on fieldwork at a pharmaceutical company. Pharmaceutical companies are considered elite settings, and often assumed to be powerful in relation to the researcher and dominating the data construction. However, such a view conceptualizes power in terms of fixed categories, in which there is a superior and subordinate position. We reconsider the impact of elite informants in the light of a constructivist, interactionist view on power, in which power is dynamic and not necessarily entailing domination. We answer the following research questions: (1) How can we observe power dynamics, as conceptualized in a constructionist and interaction orientation, in ethnographic research? and (2) How can we reflect on what these power dynamics mean for data construction, based on our experiences in elite settings? To do so, we make use of discursive and interactional analytic methods and propose three levels of analysis: (1) the level of conversation, (2) the level of ethnography, and (3) the level of the organization in society. They respectively shed light on power in relation to (1) what is said and how, (2) the meanings attached to the ethnographic events, and (3) the meaning of the ethnography in relation to the discourses on the organization in society. With this article, we aim to provide researchers with a methodological tool to approach and to reflect on the significance of power relations in the context of ethnography and interviewing and its impact on data construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]