Organ donation agency: A discourse analysis of correspondence between donor and organ recipient families
Abstract
Studies about the psychosocial issues concerning organ donation and transplantation tend to focus on the experiences of donor or recipient families. Little is therefore known about the part played by correspondence exchanged between these two groups; in particular how they perceive the agency of organ donation. This is the first analysis to address the representation of the act of donation from the viewpoint of both donor and recipient families through interrogation of archived correspondence data, using linguistic techniques. The data was drawn from a collection of letters, from four USA Organ Procurement Organisations, exchanged between donor and transplant recipient families. Donor families consistently linguistically ascribed agency and accountability for donation to the person who died, the donor. For the recipient families, on the other hand, the ‘giver’ was mainly implied, ambiguous or ascribed to the donor family.Citation
Galasiński, D. and Sque, M. (2016) 'Organ donation agency: A discourse analysis of correspondence between donor and organ recipient families', Sociology of Health and Illness, 38 pp.1350–1363. doi:10.1111/1467-9566.12478Publisher
John Wiley & Sons LtdJournal
Sociology of Health and IllnessAdditional Links
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-9566.12478Type
Journal articleLanguage
enISSN
0141-9889ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1111/1467-9566.12478
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