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Language, Gender and Pregnancy Loss

Expected online publication date:  03 October 2025

Beth Malory
Affiliation:
University College London

Summary

This Element explores the gendered dimensions of the ways language used to describe, define, and diagnose pregnancy loss impacts experiences of receiving and delivering healthcare in a UK context. It situates experiences of pregnancy loss language against the backdrop of gender role expectations, ideological tensions around reproductive choice, and medical misogyny; asking how language both reflects and influences contemporary gender norms and understandings of maternal responsibility. To do this, the Element analyses 10 focus group transcripts from metalinguistic discussions with 42 lived experience and healthcare professional participants, and 202 written metalinguistic contributions from the same cohorts. It demonstrates the gendered social and symbolic meanings of diagnostic terminology such as miscarriage, incompetent cervix, and termination or abortion in the context of a wanted pregnancy, as well as clinical discourses, on the experience of pregnancy loss and subsequent recovery and wellbeing. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Information

Type
Element
Information
Online ISBN: 9781009633840
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NC
This content is Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC-BY-NC 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/cclicenses/

Accessibility standard: Unknown

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Language, Gender and Pregnancy Loss
  • Beth Malory, University College London
  • Online ISBN: 9781009633840
Available formats No formats are currently available for this content.
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Language, Gender and Pregnancy Loss
  • Beth Malory, University College London
  • Online ISBN: 9781009633840
Available formats No formats are currently available for this content.
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Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Language, Gender and Pregnancy Loss
  • Beth Malory, University College London
  • Online ISBN: 9781009633840
Available formats No formats are currently available for this content.
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