The discourse on counselling on HIV/AIDS: A case study of the Bamenda Regional Hospital

CaHReF 2016, Yaoundé Conges hall, 23 – 26 August 2016 , PL149

HIV/AIDS has puzzled scientists, medical doctors and even the general public despite mass counselling throughout Africa in general and Cameroon in particular. A central premise of this work is that language plays a significant role in health care delivery and in mediating people’s experiences of, and beliefs about HIV/AIDS. The 6th Millennium Development Goal specifically focuses on combating HIV/AIDS so the problem this research seeks to solve is to understand why despite the existence of HIV/AIDS counsellors and social counsellors at various levels, the number of HIV/AIDS cases has still been on the rise. 

The conviction in this research is that by examining this issue from the point of view of how Africans in general and HIV/AIDS counsellors in particular “talk” about it, some insights may be revealed as to why there are lapses in communicating this epidemic. The communicative strategies crucial to understanding some of the conditions involved in HIV transmission, communication and health maintenance at the Bamenda Regional Hospital are therefore key issues in this research. In this regard, the main objective in this work is to verify the discourses that obtain during the counselling of HIV/AIDS to see whether they help in the construction or the deconstruction of this pandemic disease. This is because, counselling HIV/AIDS can influence attitudes, gender role expectations, stigmatization, and risk-taking behaviour. 

Two methods are actually used in the collection of the data for this work; the survey method and the use of recorded interviews and conversations. The counsellors are interviewed and the counselling sessions are equally recorded. Kinesics and paralanguage are observed and noted as they have a vital role in communicating HIV/AIDS. As ten Have (1991: 138) observes, medical interviews are tightly organized interactional events and doctor-patient is no exception.This work is undertaken within the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) drawing especially on Teun van Dijk’s Socio-Cognitive Approach which states that properties of language that can vary as a function of social power should be taken into consideration when analyzing language. CDA not only looks at discourse as a social practice but also as a political practice, which establishes,

HIV/AIDS, discourse, counselling, communication, Critical Discourse Analysis