dialectics and health communication

In Chapter 12 Griffin discusses relational dialectics. I've applied this theory in my own work on communicating disability and communicating breast cancer. For the latter study, my colleague Joy Hart and I examined blogs written by women with breast cancer. Previous research on blogs written by people with cancer found they blogged to express their own opinions and frustrations, share stores, for empowerment, and as a coping mechanism.

In our study we examined five blogs written by women with breast cancer. We were interested in the dialectics the women expressed in writing about their experiences with the disease. We identified four dialectics: control-acceptance, same-changed, private-public, and selfish-nurturing. The first dialectic represented a tension between exercising control over the cancer and the person's overall health and accepting the diagnosis as something to live with and learn from. The same-changed dialectic represented a tension between being unaffected by the cancer and treatment (remaining "normal") and being a different person since the diagnosis. The public-private dialectic referred to a tension between seeking support from others and at the same time being alone in the experience of the illness. The selfish-nurturing dialectic highlighted the tension between focusing on the self and providing support for others, a tension the women found particularly difficult to deal with due to cultural norms.

Although relational dialectics has been applied primarily in examining interviews or surveys in which people describe their interpersonal relationships, this study demonstrated the utility of applying the theory to how bloggers describe their experiences with a health crisis.

~ Professor Cyborg