Modelling Agency - Why and How?
Pills, Life, Agency - HIV Treatment Decisions as Language in Social Context - Alison Moore
Alison Moore [+]
University of Wollongong
Alison Moore is an Associate Professor in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Wollongong, Australia. She has degrees in linguistics and public health and has previously held research and teaching positions at Macquarie University and the University of Sydney. Ongoing research interests include systemic functional linguistics, modelling register and context, health discourse, and the representation and treatment of animals. Across these concerns a unifying theme is the construal of agency and identity. Alison is currently the Vice-President of the Australian Systemic Functional Linguistics Association and an editorial board member for the Journal of Animal Studies.
Description
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.