Language Ideology in Discourses on Physician Assisted Dying: Untangling Threads of Discord in the Case of Brittany Maynard

Language Ideology in Discourses on Physician Assisted Dying: Untangling Threads of Discord in the Case of Brittany Maynard

Caitlin M. Cassady

Language matters in an ethical debate about death. Physician assisted dying for the terminally ill is legal in only a handful of places in the United States, however locales continue to actively consider the issue through legislation or legal action. The year 2015 saw physician-assisted death legalized by a Supreme Court decision in Canada, and by legislative action in the State of California. Prior to this legislation, in 2014, 29 year-old California native and Oregon transplant Brittany Maynard became an outspoken activist in the Death-with-Dignity movement at a national level. During the course of her advocacy for terminal patients’ rights to hasten their deaths, she identified use of the word “suicide” as “inflammatory”. Although not the first of their kind, Maynard’s contestations of the word suicide may be the most public and widely debated to date in the United States. This paper uses discourse analysis to examine publicly available internet texts focusing on terminological contestations and varying perspectives of euphemistic language forming ideology in an ethical debate. I argue that candid declarations of ‘correct’ or ‘best’ terminology within these texts can act as a window through which what really matters, what is at stake for those taking part in the debate, can come into focus. Linguistic and medical anthropology offer useful lenses for examining cultural beliefs about terminal illness and meaning in language disagreements surrounding physician assisted dying. Research exploring common language and associated meanings about morally ambiguous death choices in the United States is valuable not only to anthropologies of death and suicide, but also potentially to professions working with the terminally ill. Findings may have important implications both for future research on American English language about death, as well as how medical and legal professionals discuss physician assisted dying, suicide, or other contested terms with those they service.