[Production of meanings related to Down syndrome]

This article explores how medical and lay discourses make themselves intelligible by using figures of speech and jointly constructing a socially homogeneous idea of children with Down syndrome, based on an ethnographic study performed at the Down Syndrome Out-Patient Clinic in the Jos Carlos Cabral de Almeida Center for Clinical Genetics, part of the Department of Genetics at the Fernandes Figueira Institute, a Federal reference hospital for maternal and child health belonging to the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation.