Agency in endometriosis pain communication in English and Spanish

Stella Bullo, Mariana Pascual, Dalia Magaña
Communication & medicine · 2022 · vol. 18(1) , pp. 22–36 · doi:10.1558/cam.20075 · PMID:39916071 · W4313441067
article OA: closed CC0 ⤵ 1 in-corpus citation
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⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

This study analyzed how women with endometriosis in English and Spanish discuss their pain, finding that they often portray pain as an agentive force diminishing their own agency, with cultural differences in how pain is represented.

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Abstract

This article interrogates the linguistic construction of agency in accounts of endometriosis pain in English and Spanish. Endometriosis is a reproductive condition causing incapacitating pain which is often dismissed or normalised, leading to delayed diagnosis. We take a patient-centred qualitative approach and analyse data gathered from 10 semi-structured interviews with women with endometriosis in British English and Argentine Spanish, using the transitivity and social actor representation frameworks. The findings indicate that the women across the two settings represent pain as an agentive overpowering actor and themselves with varying degrees of decreased agency. However, pain is more closely related to mental representations of the patients' experiences in Spanish than in English, where it is construed as an actor performing physical actions. The findings of the study have implications for pain communication practices and cross-language healthcare communication and should inform local pain assessment measures.

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Condition tags

endometriosis

Citation neighborhood

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. [ expand to 2 hops ] — adds papers reached through this work's immediate citers/citees. Heavier; up to 60 extra dots.

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License: CC0 · commercial use OK