Power Play: gender, power, and language of nurses and doctors

Power Play: gender, power, and language of nurses and doctors

Stacy F. Markel

Speech is entwined with identities of power, status, class, ethnicity and in particular, gender. This paper will examine discursive strategies indexed by power and gender identities in the specific context of linguistic interactions between doctors and nurses in and out of medical settings. Media, both real life and scripted, is the setting for these interactions. How do doctors speak to each other and to nurses? Does gender matter? Are real life attitudes about gender power relations reflected in discursive practices, both in real life and scripted media? How have these discursive practices changed over time? The media sources used to answer these questions cover a timespan from 1960 to the present day. This paper does not attempt to answer another interesting question: whether these language practices are indexed by ethnicity. That is a question for another paper. This analysis begins with a historical discussion of metalinguistic ideas about gendered language, including myths and facts, and shows how media sources agree with or repudiate these ideas. It also attempts to show how changes in modes of speech are both reflective of, and perhaps shape changing power and gender roles.