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Troubling distinctions: a semiotics of the nursing/technology relationship
Author(s) -
Sandelowski Margarete
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
nursing inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.66
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1440-1800
pISSN - 1320-7881
DOI - 10.1046/j.1440-1800.1999.00030.x
Subject(s) - semiotics , metaphor , sociology , nursing literature , object (grammar) , epistemology , linguistics , nursing , psychology , medicine , philosophy , pathology , alternative medicine
I consider the discursive practices that have served conceptually and ontologically to trouble the boundaries between nursing and technology: between nurse/human/subject and machine/non‐human/object. Nursing and technology have been semiotically related largely by two processes: (a) by the metaphor that depicts nursing as technology and (b) by opposition, or as not like and even in conflict with technology. Less frequently but no less significantly, nursing and technology have been semiotically linked (c) by the metaphor that depicts technology as nursing and (d) by metonymy, or by word or picture juxtapositions of nursing with technology. The troubling distinctions between nursing and technology suggest yet another reason why the construction of difference continues to elude nursing.