Date of Award
8-16-2024
Document Type
Open Access Dissertation
Department
English Language and Literatures
First Advisor
John Muckelbauer
Abstract
Placebos, Rhetoric, and the Power of Expectation examines the relationship between persuasion and health to determine what interventions rhetoric could make in the interdisciplinary field of placebo studies. This exploration of the relationship between rhetoric and placebo responses relies on non-anthropocentric definitions and theories of rhetoric as well as a multifaceted archive that includes patient narratives, clinical intake forms, and peer-reviewed scientific studies of condition-specific placebo responses. The impact of this investigation spans the practical and the theoretical. First, rhetorical study highlights the importance of a patient’s perception of care in patient recovery. To this end, rhetoric offers audience-focused methods that may help medical professionals ensure that their attempted or intended care is read as such by their patients. Second, this investigation offers a path forward for communication futures in medicine, as rhetorical understandings of persuasion, the spread of ideas, and expectation development could benefit medical professionals who communicate with and treat patients. To this end, changes to medical education curricula, patient treatment, and trial design that focus on the impact of persuasive elements would help medical students, physicians, and clinical trialists to effectively consider patient expectations in clinical interactions. Finally, though the main focus is on what rhetoric can offer placebo studies, this exchange is a two-way street. Because placebos are sometimes described as persuading a patient or a patient’s body, this interdisciplinary conversation also invites us to turn a mirror on rhetoric itself. As a result of this study of placebo responses, I posit a “rhetoric of expectation” that provides a new way to frame, understand, and theorize the process of expectation development (and the expression and impact of expectations) from a rhetorical perspective.
Rights
© 2024, Jennifer M. Reeher
Recommended Citation
Reeher, J. M.(2024). Placebos, Rhetoric, and the Power of Expectation. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/7710