Blurb:

Chapter 4 demonstrates the centrality of the social category of agency in research on shared decision-making in HIV, and considers how social theory and linguistics might be brought together to help to clarify the role of agency and the resources used in its expression. The notion of meaning potential is explored as a way of teasing out different levels of interactive patterning that construe agency. This chapter mixes the presentation and analysis of original data with an original critique of the way the concept of social agency is deployed in linguistic and other forms of textual analysis.