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Critical Discourse Studies: Mad, Bad or Nuisance? Discursive Constructions of Detained Patients in Polish Nursing Notes

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Analysing Health Communication

Abstract

In this chapter, we examine discursive constructions of detained patients and their relationships with the nursing staff using notes written by nurses. Our study is anchored within Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), still often referred to as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), an interdisciplinary approach to the study of discourse as a form of social practice (Fairclough 1989, 1992). CDS is concerned with the role of language and discourse in shaping society (Krzyżanowski 2010). Van Dijk (2015) argues that CDS is a discourse study with an attitude and discourse analysts’ aim to understand, expose and—in consequence—challenge social inequality (van Dijk 2015). Critique in CDS can be understood as both normative, as CDS is concerned with evaluating the extra-linguistic realities, and explanatory, as it also looks for explanations of what is revealed (Fairclough 2012).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For clarity, in this chapter, we shall be using the name ‘Critical Discourse Studies’ or ‘CDS’.

  2. 2.

    The entries in patients’ notes are quoted in their entirety. There is no text which precedes or follows the notes. What precedes or follows such entries are other entries, which, typically, are graphically separated from one another. The other extracts in this chapter are quoted in their entirety as self-contained nursing notes.

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Acknowledgement

This research was supported by the National Science Centre in Poland under Grant OPUS 2013/09/B/HS6/02796.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Journalism and Social Communication, University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland

    Dariusz Galasiński

  2. University of Social Sciences and Humanities (SWPS), Warszawa, Poland

    Justyna Ziółkowska

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  1. Dariusz Galasiński
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  1. Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

    Gavin Brookes

  2. School of English, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

    Daniel Hunt

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Galasiński, D., Ziółkowska, J. (2021). Critical Discourse Studies: Mad, Bad or Nuisance? Discursive Constructions of Detained Patients in Polish Nursing Notes. In: Brookes, G., Hunt, D. (eds) Analysing Health Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68184-5_9

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