Research indicates that the number of individuals diagnosed with neurological, learning
and psychiatric disorders has shown a sharp increase in recent years. An increasing
acknowledgement of the importance of narratives and discourses in constructing social
reality has stimulated much debate on the consequences of diagnosing individuals with
such diagnostic labels. The aim of this study was to explore the ways in which such
individuals construct meaning from their experiences of adapting to their diagnostic
labels by reframing them as interpersonal metaphors. In service of this aim, a social
constructionist epistemology was adopted and discourse analysis was used to analyse the
results from three participants’ interview data. The results indicate that participants
managed to construct meaning from their experiences with their diagnostic labels through
a reframing process that serve to promote positive perceptions of self in relation to others.
Furthermore, this meaning-construction process appears to be a reflective and
interactional one, in that it relies on a negotiation of meanings between people in a
retrospective fashion. / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:umkn-dsp01.int.unisa.ac.za:10500/3358 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Van Zyl, Francois Nicolaas |
| Contributors | Nel, J. A. (Prof.) |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (viii, 167 leaves) |
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