Chapter 4: Negotiating parental/familial responsibility in genetic counselling
| Dublin Core | PKP Metadata Items | Metadata for this Document | |
| 1. | Title | Title of document | Chapter 4: Negotiating parental/familial responsibility in genetic counselling - Discourse and Responsibility in Professional Settings |
| 2. | Creator | Author's name, affiliation, country | Gøril Thomassen; Department of Language and communication studies, Norwegian University of Science and Technology; Norway |
| 2. | Creator | Author's name, affiliation, country | Srikant Sarangi; Cardiff University; United Kingdom |
| 2. | Creator | Author's name, affiliation, country | John-Arne Skolbekken; Norwegian University of Science and Technology ; |
| 3. | Subject | Discipline(s) | Linguistics; Applied Linguistics |
| 4. | Subject | Keyword(s) | genetic counselling; genetic testing; genetic risk; dissemination of test results; parental/familial responsibility; decision-making; (non)directiveness |
| 5. | Subject | Subject classification | Discourse Studies; Pragmatics; Linguistics (CF); Discourse analysis (CFG) |
| 6. | Description | Abstract | The notion of responsibility is central in healthcare encounters, especially when it involves decisions about others, e.g., parents making decisions for children’s wellbeing. In the context of genetic counselling, given the familial basis of genetic disorders, decisions surrounding offer/uptake of genetic testing to determine the risk status of children become salient. Previous studies have shown that both genetic counsellors and parents routinely orient to others’ perspectives. Extending Pilnick’s (2001) finding that genetic counsellors allude to ‘what other people do’, Sarangi’s (2010) proposal which distinguishes between ‘family-others’ and ‘general-others’ vis-à-vis role-responsibility offers a useful framework to examine how parental/familial responsibility is contingently negotiated between genetic counsellors and parents. The data for the present study consist of 20 genetic counselling sessions within a hospital department of medical genetics in Norway. The parents are either affected by cancer or at a high risk of inheriting cancer because of family history. Using discourse analysis we demonstrate how parental responsibility is framed and responded to differentially to cover genetic risk assessment, the testing process and the dissemination of test results. Our findings indicate that counsellors tend to be more directive about the process of decision making, which may amount to shifting attention from at-risk children to the parents themselves. We link our findings to the professional ethos of (non)directiveness in genetic counselling. |
| 7. | Publisher | Organizing agency, location | Equinox Publishing Ltd |
| 8. | Contributor | Sponsor(s) | |
| 9. | Date | (YYYY-MM-DD) | 22-Apr-2016 |
| 10. | Type | Status & genre | Peer-reviewed Article |
| 11. | Type | Type | |
| 12. | Format | File format | |
| 13. | Identifier | Uniform Resource Identifier | https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/books/article/view/26840 |
| 14. | Identifier | Digital Object Identifier | 10.1558/equinox.26840 |
| 15. | Source | Journal/conference title; vol., no. (year) | Equinox eBooks Publishing; Discourse and Responsibility in Professional Settings |
| 16. | Language | English=en | En |
| 18. | Coverage | Geo-spatial location, chronological period, research sample (gender, age, etc.) | |
| 19. | Rights | Copyright and permissions | Copyright 2014 Equinox Publishing Ltd |