A linguistic view on gender in medical interaction

Women’s and men’s experiences of health, healthcare trajectories, and health outcomes often vary. Explanations for these differences go beyond biological sex, and attention for the effects of psychosocial gender on health has increased in the past few years. Yet, many aspects of gender and its multiple dimensions in health remain unclear, such as the role of gender in medical interaction. A focus on physicians’ and patients’ language use in consultations, and on how their language use is connected to gender, could increase our understanding of how gender impacts health and healthcare. This dissertation focuses on general practice consultations, which constitute an important stage in in the medical trajectory. By adopting a multi-method approach that explores the connection between gender and language use in medical interaction from various angles, I aim to provide a linguistic view on gender in interactions between GPs and patients with common somatic symptoms.