Download or read book Material Discourses of Health and Illness written by Lucy Yardley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Material Discourses of Health and Illness applies discursive approaches to the field of health psychology, in stark contrast to the bio-medical model of health and illness. The discursive approach uses the person's experience and feelings as the central focus of interest, whereas the more traditional models regarded these as coincidental and relatively unimportant. The book provides an accessible and compelling introduction to social constructionist and discursive approaches to those with limited previous knowledge of socio-linguistic theory and research. It provides practical examples of how these approaches can be applied to the field of health psychology with a collection of sophisticated discursive analyses which demonstrate the distinctive contribution that can be made by psychologists to a field that has been largely dominated by sociologists and anthropologists.