Graduation Term
2015
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Department of Sociology and Anthropology: Sociology
Committee Chair
Virginia Gill
Abstract
This thesis reports findings from a conversation analytic study that investigate how surgeons describe cancer to early-stage breast cancer patients during preoperative consultations. Drawing upon audio recordings of actual consultations, this study examines one surgeon's use of a type of figurative expression, an analogy, to describe what cancer is and how it behaves. My analysis focuses on the role that this analogy plays in the activities that unfold in one phase of the surgical consultation, and reveals some social organizational dimensions of figurative expressions that have gone unexplored in prior research.
Access Type
Thesis-Open Access
Recommended Citation
Cox, Keith, "' Cancer Is like Teenagers': Figurative Comparisons in Surgical Consultations for Early-Stage Breast Cancer" (2015). Theses and Dissertations. 428.
https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd/428
DOI
http://doi.org/10.30707/ETD2015.Cox.K