Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer:
Paper Instructions:

What does Rhetoric Offer Our Understanding of Medicine and Health?

Your primary objective in this paper is to answer the question: WHAT DOES RHETORIC OFFER OUR UNDERSTANDING OF MEDICINE AND HEALTH? 

By way of answering this question, choose one of the following questions to formulate an argument for the paper. Indicate somewhere in your paper which prompt you are using.  

1.Select a text or image that uses a metaphor commonly used in health care/medical discourse. Assess the advantages and disadvantages of that metaphor. 

2.Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of narrative in mediating between the “universe of illness” and the “universe of disease” or between the “voice of the life-world” versus the “voice of medicine.” In answering this question, make reference to a specific example of a health and/or medical narrative.

3.Explain what one or two rhetorical concepts we have discussed or read about in class thus far (kairos, ethos, rhetorical situation, epideictic rhetoric, exigence, episteme, genre, narrative, metaphor, or constraints) helps us understand about a specific health or medical text. The key to being successful here is defining the rhetorical concept and applying it concretely to one example that you briefly introduce.

4.REMEMBER: YOU NEED TO MAKE AND DEFEND AN ARGUMENT AND USE CONCRETE EXAMPLES USING, DEFINING, (AND CITING) COURSE CONCEPTS. Please note that this think piece may be work-shopped and revised after receiving a grade. You are encouraged to revise and polish several paragraphs of your think piece for your final paper, for use in the part of the paper where you justify why studying the rhetoric of health and medicine is important.

5. You need a strong argument or thesis statement, which you then prove, defend, and problematize, in the paper. 

Think pieces are brief but concisely written, tightly argued papers formulated in response to prompts prepared by the professor.