title: Technology as the representative anecdote in popular discourses of health and medicine.
abstract: Using a Burkean framework (1969), this article approaches medical dramas as cultural texts to be read for dominant meanings of health and health care. Burke's representative anecdote illuminates the melding of science, technology, and healing in popular discourses of health, establishing technological intervention as the norm and marginalizing nontechnological (i.e., alternative) forms of health care. Popular entertainment reinforces this anecdote in narratives of healing as technological competence triumphing over nature.
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts, Minnesota State University, Moorhead 56563, USA.
authors.forename: L M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Harter
authors.forename: P M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Japp
mesh_terms: D000739:Anecdotes as Topic; D002983:Clinical Competence; D000529:Complementary Therapies; D004324:Drama; D006801:Humans; D008402:Mass Media; D013677:Medical Laboratory Science; D019368:Nature; D010686:Philosophy, Medical; D013690:Television; D014481:United States