Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Textual Standardization and the DSM-5 “Common Language”

  • Published:
Journal of Medical Humanities Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In February 2010, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) launched their DSM-5 website with details about the development of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). The APA invited “the general public” to review the draft diagnostic criteria and provide written comments and suggestions. This revision marks the first time the APA has solicited public review of their diagnostic manual. This article analyzes reported speech on the DSM-5 draft diagnostic criteria for the classification Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. It demonstrates how textual standardization facilitates the cultural portability of the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria such that a community of speakers beyond the borders of the APA come to be seen as exemplary speakers, writers, and revisers of the professional style. Furthermore, analysis shows how co-authoring practices recontextualize the “voice” and persona of putative patient reported speech on Criterion D2. As a consequence of textual standardization, spoken discourse becomes recontextualized as the product of scientific inquiry and the organization of psychiatric knowledge.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Agha, Asif. 2003. “The Social Life of Cultural Value.” Language & Communication 23:231–73.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • -----. 2005. “Voice, Footing, Enregisterment.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15 (1): 38–59.

  • Aho, Kevin. 2008. “Medicalizing Mental Health: A Phenomenological Approach.” Journal of Medical Humanities 29 (4): 243–59.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • American Psychiatric Association. 1980. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 3rd ed. Washington, DC: Author.

    Google Scholar 

  • American Psychiatric Association. 1987. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 3rd ed., revised. Washington, DC: Author.

  • American Psychiatric Association. 1994. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th ed. Washington, DC: Author.

    Google Scholar 

  • American Psychiatric Association. 2000. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th ed., text revised. Washington, DC: Author.

  • American Psychiatric Association. 2012a. “DSM-5 Development.” Accessed June 21, 2012. http://www.dsm5.org.

  • American Psychiatric Association. 2012b. “G 05 Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.” Accessed May 11, 2012. http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevision/Pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=165.

  • Andrus, Jennifer. 2011. “Beyond Texts in Context: Recontextualization and the Co-Production of Texts and Contexts in the Legal Discourse, Excited Utterance Exception to Hearsay.” Discourse & Society 22:115–36.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Antaki, Charles, Rebecca Barnes, and Ivan Leudar. 2005. “Diagnostic Formulations in Psychotherapy.” Discourse Studies 7 (6): 627–47.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aristotle. 1960. The Rhetoric of Aristotle, translated by Lane Cooper. Englewood Cliff, NJ: Prentice Hall.

  • Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Edited by Michael Holquist and translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

  • -----. 1986. “The Problem of Speech Genres.” In Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist and translated by Vern W. McGee, 60–102. Austin: University of Texas Press.

  • Becker, Alton. L. 1994. “Repetition and Otherness: An Essay.” In Repetition in Discourse: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, vol. 2, edited by Barbara Johnstone, 162–175. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing.

  • Bell, Allan. 1991. The Language of News Media. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berkenkotter, Carol. 2001. “Genre Systems at Work: DSM-IV and Rhetorical Recontextualization in Psychotherapy Paperwork.” Written Communication 18 (3): 326–349.

  • -----. 2008. Patient Tales: Case Histories and the Uses of Narrative in Psychiatry. Columbia, SC: University South Carolina Press.

  • Berkenkotter, Carol and Doris Ravotas. 1997. “Genre as Tool in the Transmission of Practice Over Time and Across Professional Boundaries.” Mind, Culture, and Activity 4 (4): 256–274.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • -----. 2002. “New Research Strategies in Genre Analysis: Reported Speech as Recontextualization in a Psychotherapist’s Notes and Initial Assessment.” In Discourse Studies in Composition, edited by Ellen Barton and Gail Stygall, 229–55. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

  • Blommaert, Jan. 2005. Discourse: A Critical Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Burke, Kenneth. 1966. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • -----. 1969. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  • -----. 1973. The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action, 3rd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  • Buttny, Richard. 1998. “Putting Prior Talk into Context: Reported Speech and the Reporting Context.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 31:45–58.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Charland, Maurice. 1987. “Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Québécois.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 73 (2): 133–150.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crowley, Tony. 2003. Standard English and the Politics of Language, 2nd ed. London: Palgrave MacMillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Emmons, Kimberly. 2010. Black Dogs and Blue Words: Depression and Gender in the Age of Self-Care. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferrara, Kathleen. 1992. “The Interactive Achievement of a Sentence: Joint Productions in Therapeutic Discourse.” Discourse Processes 15:207–228.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • -----. 1994. Therapeutic Ways With Words. New York: Oxford University Press.

  • Foa, Edna B., and Barbara O. Rothbaum. 1998. Treating the Trauma of Rape: Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for PTSD. New York: Guilford.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foa, Edna. B., Anke Ehlers, David M. Clark, David F. Tolin, and Susan M. Orsillo. 1999. “The Posttraumatic Cognitions Inventory (PTCI): Development and Validation.” Psychological Assessment 11:303–314.

  • Frances, Allen. 2009. “Issues for DSM-V: The Limitations of Field Trials: A Lesson from DSM-IV.” American Journal of Psychiatry 166:1322.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Friedman, Matthew J., Patricia A. Resick, Richard A. Bryant, and Chris R. Brewin. 2011. “Considering PTSD for DSM-5.” Depression and Anxiety 28:750–769.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goody, Jack. 1977. The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Graham, Scott. S. 2011. “Dis-ease or Disease: Ontological Rarefaction in the Medical-Industrial Complex.” Journal of Medical Humanities 32 (3): 167–186.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hinton, Devon E., and Roberto Lewis-Fernández. 2011. “The Cross-Cultural Validity of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Implications for DSM-5.” Depression and Anxiety 9:783–801.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holt, Elizabeth, and Rebecca Clift. 2007. “Introduction.” In Reporting Talk: Reported Speech in Interaction, edited by Elizabeth Holt and Rebecca Clift, 1–15. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jamieson, Kathleen. M. 1975. “Antecedent Genre as Rhetorical Constraint.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 61:406–15.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kirk, Stuart A., and Herb Kutchins. 1992. The Selling of DSM: The Rhetoric of Science in Psychiatry. New York: Aldine De Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kupfer, David. 2010. “‘Real-World’ Field Trials Next Step in DSM-5 Process.” Psychiatric News 45 (19): 4. Accessed June 21, 2012. http://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/newsArticle.aspx?articleid=113746.

  • Kutchins, Herb, and Stuart A. Kirk. 1997. Making Us Crazy. DSM: The Psychiatric Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorders. New York: The Free Press.

  • Lewis, Bradley. 2000. “Psychiatry and Postmodern Theory.” Journal of Medical Humanities 21(2): 71–84.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lifton, Robert J. 1967. Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima. New York: Random House.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCarthy, Lucille Parkinson, and Joan Page Gerring. 1994. “Revising Psychiatry’s Charter Document: DSM-IV.” Written Communication 11 (2): 147–92.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCarthy, Lucille Parkinson. 1991. “A Psychiatrist Using DSM-III: The Influence of a Charter Document in Psychiatry.” In Textual Dynamics of the Professions, edited by Charles Bazerman and James Paradis, 358–78. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

  • Milroy, James, and Lesley Milroy. 1991. Authority in Language: Investigating Language Prescription and Standardisation, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Minkowski, Eugène. 1946. “L’Anesthésie Affective.” Annales Medico-Psychologiques 104:80–88.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peräklyä, Anssi, and Sanna Vehviläinen. 2003. “Conversation Analysis and the Professional Stocks of Interactional Knowledge. Discourse & Society 14 (6): 727–750.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Perelman, Chaim, and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. 1969. The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reynolds, John. 2008. “The Rhetoric of Mental Healthcare.” In Rhetoric of Healthcare: Essays Toward a New Disciplinary Inquiry, edited by Barbara Heifferon and Stuart C. Brown, 135–150. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scott, Wilbur J. 1990. “PTSD in DSM-III: A Case in the Politics of Diagnosis and Disease.” Social Problems 37 (3): 294–310.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Segal, Judy Z. 2005. Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Silverstein, Michael. 1976. “Shifters, Linguistic Categories, and Cultural Description.” In Meaning in Anthropology, edited by Keith H. Basso and Henry A. Selby, 11–55. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Silverstein, Michael, and Greg Urban. 1996. “The Natural History of Discourse.” In Natural Histories of Discourse, edited by Michael Silverstein and Greg Urban, 1–17. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spafford, Marlee M., Catherine F. Schryer, and Lorelei Lingard. 2008. “The Rhetoric of Patient Voice: Reported Talk With Patients in Referral and Consultation Letters.” Communication and Medicine 5 (2): 183–194.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spiegel, Alix. 2005. “The Dictionary of Disorder: How One Man Revolutionized Psychiatry.” The New Yorker 80 (41): 56–63.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spoel, Philippa, and Susan James. 2006. “Negotiating Public and Professional Interests: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Debate Concerning the Regulation of Midwifery in Ontario, Canada.” Journal of Medical Humanities 27 (3): 167–186.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stewart, Craig. 2008. “How a Media Controversy Can Influence a Scientific Publication: The Case of Robert L. Spitzer’s ‘Reparative Therapy’ Study.” In Rhetoric in Detail: Discourse Analyses of Rhetorical Talk and Text, edited by Barbara Johnstone and Christopher Eisenhart, 255–278. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Tannen, Deborah. 1989. Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Terr, Lenore. 1983. “Chowchilla Revisited: The Effect of Psychic Trauma Four Years After a School Bus Kidnaping.” American Journal of Psychiatry 140 (12): 1543–1550.

    Google Scholar 

  • Urban, Greg. 1996. “Entextualization, Replication, and Power.” In Natural Histories of Discourse, edited by Michael Silverstein and Greg Urban, 21–44. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ussher, Jane. 2003. “The Role of Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder in the Subjectification of Women.” Journal of Medical Humanities 24 (1/2): 131–146.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vatz, Richard. 1973. “The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 6:154–161.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vološinov, Valentin N. 1986. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. Ladislav Matejka and I.R. Titunik. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Watters, Ethan. 2010. Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche. New York: The Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, Mitchell. 1993. “DSM-III and the Transformation of American Psychiatry: A History.” American Journal of Psychiatry 150:399–410.

    Google Scholar 

  • Young, Allan. 1995. The Harmony of Illusions: Inventing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English, Simon Fraser University, Academic Quadrangle 6129, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6, Canada

    Patty A. Kelly

Authors
  1. Patty A. Kelly
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Patty A. Kelly.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Kelly, P.A. Textual Standardization and the DSM-5 “Common Language”. J Med Humanit 35, 171–189 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-014-9281-9

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-014-9281-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation