Writing about Caring. Discourses, genres and remediation in elder care
Issue: Vol 8 No. 2 (2011)
Journal: Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice
Subject Areas: Writing and Composition Linguistics
Abstract:
In this article we discuss the results of a study within the project Language work as care work. The study focuses on the documentation practices of carers and assistant nurses within three elder care facilities in Sweden. The aim is to explore how representations of work and work content are remediated and recontextualised in some of the key written genres in the nursing home. In this process different discourses, and thus different versions of the practice of caring, are promoted and restrained. In order to show how the literacy practices and written text genres of elder care construe different meanings of caring we closely examine four key genres in the communicative chain and analyse them in terms of genre and discourse. The data discussed here was collected in an ethnographic study lasting eighteen months, using participant observation, qualitative interviews and collection of key texts as the main tools.
Author: Anna-Malin Karlsson, Zoe Nikolaidou
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