To Örebro University

Melander uses the increasingly debated disease endometriosis as an example to explore ongoing processes of negotiating a disease in unfolding forum interactions. Methodologically, the chapter explores a possible combination of discourse analytical tools with concepts from Actor-Network Theory, which more distinctly emphasize the unfolding practices, and ties the ongoing societal process to concrete linguistic practice. As the analysis demonstrates, the interlocutors make use of various shifts between general and particular aspects of the disease, most often represented by personal experiences. Such personal narratives can strengthen a claim put forward, as well as nuance and broaden the disease category. Melander also demonstrates the more or less established prerequisites that underline the interactions, thus pointing to the possible ways of discussing illness experiences in the forum.

This article explores an emerging genre in Sweden: self-referral letters. Although written by the patients themselves, self-referrals have the same objective as a doctor’s referral: to refer someone to specialist care. In relation to previous research, these texts shed light on a new type of writing that some patients engage in, but that requires literacy and rhetorical skills that are presumably not available to everyone. The data consist of self-referrals written by women seeking care for endometriosis, and interviews with some of these women. Using genre as a guiding concept, the analysis explores both the linguistic and semiotic resources that are drawn on in the texts, and the textual potentials and limitations that patients identify when writing. Results show that the self-referrals attend to expectations about medical expertise. For instance, writers use formal and familiar voices to legitimize the need for care, and incorporate elements of medical discourse when presenting symptoms. Parallels can also be drawn between the doctor-patient relationship represented in the texts and a traditional doctor’s visit: doctors are often positioned as knowledgeable interpreters of the information, whereas patients describe themselves as moral and rational. The article concludes that even though the self-referrals enable patients to seek care in an alternative way, they are constrained by several genre expectations and a traditional division of labor between doctors and patients.

This article explores how illness is narrated on a shared activist Instagram account, where five women share their experiences of living with the chronic disease endometriosis. The day-to-day, multimodal, and collaborative nature of the account is an example of online contemporary illness narratives. Informed by dscourse analysis, social semiotics, and research on small stories, this article analyzes the semiotic resources used for narrating, the social space of the account, and the particular discourses and identities that the narratives index. Following the narra-tive dimensions of Ochs and Capps, the analysis demonstrates a dynamic interplay between the different semiotic resources used to narrate about illness. The combination of images on Instagram, for instance, affords a sequential progres-sion that moves the teller through space and place. In other cases, the images are used to contradict or strengthen the story that is told in writing. The account’s construction as a shared space for raising awareness about endometriosis experi-ences also influences the stories that are told; tellers orient themselves both to previous and current stories on the account, and attend to the particular endometriosis experiences that are tellable on the account. In this way, the tellers demonstrate awareness of the typical endometriosis story, and position them-selves as moral and knowledgeable endometriosis patients.