{"id":1684,"date":"2025-02-05T10:00:21","date_gmt":"2025-02-05T10:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/clcrseminars\/?page_id=1684"},"modified":"2025-02-05T10:27:24","modified_gmt":"2025-02-05T10:27:24","slug":"michaelhandford","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/clcrseminars\/michaelhandford\/","title":{"rendered":"2 October 2024: Professor Michael Handford"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday 2 October 2024 (Week 1 of term) 1.00 – 2.00pm, Room 2.03, John Percival Building<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cancer, Discourse and Intercultural Communication<\/strong><\/p>\n

Professor Michael Handford<\/a> (Cardiff University)<\/p>\n

A cancer diagnosis often induces a radical shift in one’s sense of self and relationships,
\naccompanied by a descent into what Frank (2013) describes as “chaos.” This talk argues that while communication and intercultural studies cannot cure cancer, they offer potentially transformative tools for navigating this chaotic “kingdom of the sick” (Sontag, 1978).<\/p>\n

Drawing on auto-ethnographic reflections of my stage-4 cancer diagnosis in 2011
\n(Handford, forthcoming), I explore how concepts and tools such as Discourse (Gee,
\n2008), framing, and creative metaphors can help cancer patients move from chaos to
\nincreased meaningfulness and agency. For instance, reframing one’s identity as a
\n“person-with-cancer” \u2013 a new secondary Discourse \u2013 can facilitate the transition to
\nbecoming an expert patient.<\/p>\n

I propose that cancer transforms all communicative relationships \u2013 intercultural,
\ninterpersonal, and intrapersonal \u2013 into intercultural exchanges, as the illness renders
\nthe self an ‘other’ to both oneself (Svenaeus, 2011) and others. By applying intercultural
\ncommunication strategies, such as tolerance for ambiguity, patients can better navigate these shifted relationships.<\/p>\n

This approach, however, risks reinforcing what Jain and Stacey (2015) terms “pernicious
\nindividualism” in healthcare discourse. I will reflect on this limitation by discussing how
\nthese communication tools can also enhance collective understanding and support
\nsystems for cancer patients. Patients resisting treatment recommendations as a type of
\nlimited agency (Koenig, 2012) will also be discussed.<\/p>\n

By bridging personal experience with communication theory, this talk aims to offer both
\ntheoretical insights and practical strategies for those traversing the complex terrain of
\nserious illness.<\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 Frank, Arthur (2013) The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness and Ethics. Chicago: Chicago
\nUniversity Press.
\n\u2022 Gee, James Paul (2015) Social Linguistics and Literacies. London: Routledge.
\n\u2022 Handford, Michael (forthcoming) Lump in my Throat: Communicating with Cancer. Cambridge:
\nCambridge University Press.
\n\u2022 Jain, Lochlain & Stacey, Jackie (2015) On writing about illness: A dialogue with Jain and Stacey on
\ncancer, STS, and cultural studies. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 1(1), 1-29.
\n\u2022 Koenig, Christopher (2011) Patient resistance as agency in treatment decisions. Soc. Sci. Med.
\n72, 1105–1114.
\n\u2022 Sontag, Susan (1978) Illness as Metaphor. New York: Vintage Books.
\n\u2022 Svenaeus, Fredrik (2011) Illness as unhomelike being-in-the-world: Heidegger and the
\nphenomenology of medicine. Medical Health Care and Philosophy, 14, 333\u2013343.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wednesday 2 October 2024 (Week 1 of term) 1.00 - 2.00pm, Room 2.03, John Percival Building Cancer, Discourse and Intercultural Communication Professor Michael Handford (Cardiff University) A cancer diagnosis often […]","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1684","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/clcrseminars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/clcrseminars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/clcrseminars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/clcrseminars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/clcrseminars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/clcrseminars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1685,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/clcrseminars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1684\/revisions\/1685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/clcrseminars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}