Constructing Patienthood in Brokered Medical Interaction

Drawing on extensive firsthand experience of face-to-face meetings between patients and healthcare practitioners, Constructing Patienthood in Brokered Medical Interaction: Iraqi–English Encounters is the first book-length work dedicated to situating limited-English-speaking patients on equal footing with their interlocutors as essential partners in the process of meaning-making. Afaf Ali builds on theoretical and empirical advancements in socio-medical research and language brokering to show how immigrant patients strike a balance between working cooperatively with their language brokers, or independently by overriding the language-assistance process to actuate multiple membership categories as patients, parents, and language brokerees. In doing so, they secure interactional zones that challenge the discursive asymmetries inherent in mediated doctor-patient encounters. This timely work makes it clear that impactful change in healthcare begins with successful communication.