Communications surrounding, or about colon cancer, and how linguistic agency and point of view impacts narrative force.
Agentic language impacts people’s perception of the severity of health threats
Perceived susceptibility to colon cancer is highest when agency is assigned to people, not cancer.
Ex: ‘I developed cancer’ vs. ‘Cancer developed in me’
Use of temporal agency language in health messages -> assigning temporal agency to death rather than dying person -> greater fear
Possible: messages in narrative forms can transport readers to narrative world regardless of POV
Super important as it plays into cancer patients and survivors’ storytelling- it doesn’t all have to be in first person POV as long as the narrative form is there
Reflections/questions:
Important implications of health communication strategy especially in public health campaigns, social media marketing by corporations, and patient-doctor communications and messaging.
Affirms narrative power of storytelling by cancer patients and survivors -> to the level of sentence + word choice
How can this study and further research address Jain’s criticism of health messaging and language surrounding survivorship in media and popular culture?
