Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Open Access Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Rhetoric, Theory and Culture (MS)

Administrative Home Department

Department of Humanities

Advisor 1

Andrew Fiss

Committee Member 1

Jennifer Nish

Committee Member 2

James Hammond

Abstract

This thesis draws on theories from rhetorical genre studies (Spinuzzi’s genre ecology and Freadman’s uptake), biopolitics, and the social justice turn in Technical and Professional Communication to examine how decisions are made in the processing of insurance claims. I adopt a qualitative, interpretive approach to analyze one hundred and twelve (112) claims processing examples from Ghana’s insurance industry. The findings indicate that insurance claims processing is a complex communicative system in which institutional power is enacted, negotiated, and, at times, contested. The findings also reveal that insurer-authored genres frequently enact forms of oppression (exploitation, marginalization, and powerlessness) through technical language in their policy documents and selective uptake of evidence genres, while claimants and their representatives employ counter-genres to contest such oppression. The findings suggest that claims processing operates as a biopolitical system in which life and loss are translated into calculable value. The findings have important theoretical, methodological, and practical implications.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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