Discourse of Power from the Aspect of Interruption in Medical Encounters

The discourse of medical encounters is an excellent example of both institutional talk and the discourse of power and its prominent features can be analysed from various aspects. This paper deals with interruption as an important characteristic of both doctor-patient communication and institutional talk in general. The research is focused on comparing the ways doctors and patients interrupt each other and the amount of power they need for this. First, some previous research in this field has been reviewed – it is discussed how interruptions are different from overlaps, how typical it is for patients to interrupt their doctors, how and why doctors and patients interrupt each other and whether they have equal rights when it comes to interrupting their interlocutors. As we aimed at checking these results and investigating if, how and when patients interrupted their doctors, a corpus of 37 recordings made in a tertiary referral hospital in Belgrade, Serbia, in the department of pulmonology, has been analysed. Examples of interruptions by doctors and patients were analysed according to the principles of conversation analysis and critical discourse analysis. The obtained results confirmed an ever-present asymmetry in doctor-patient communication, although it was not as conspicuous as it had been stated in some previous research. Finally, the difference between the ways in which doctors and patients interrupt each other and the reasons behind these interruptions were emphasized.

Medical terminology circulation and interactional organisation in interpreter-mediated medical encounters

Two medical encounters taking place in a Northern Italian hospital are analysed in this paper from a qualitative point of view, based on the author’s previous research. The aim is to reveal the strategies adopted by medical interpreters, in these two specific cases, to translate medical terminology and promote/exclude interlocutors’ active participation. This latter aspect is influenced by the way the interaction is socially and linguistically organised and, in particular, by how interlocutors’ utterances are translated. The prevalence of dyadic or triadic sequences and especially the shifts between such communication exchanges are pivotal in fostering or hindering interlocutors’ participation. Furthermore, medical interactions, as a form of institutional talk, enshrine specific expectations, which are mainly of a cognitive nature but may also be affective, as in the two encounters observed. By conveying such expectations and expressions of personal interest, interpreters have proved to contribute to the fair distribution of active participation among primary interlocutors. Hospital ethical approval and subjects’ written informed consent have been obtained.

The grammar of proposals for joint activities

The action of proposing has been studied from various perspectives in research on talk-in-interaction, both in mundane as well as in institutional talk. Aiming to exemplify Interactional Linguistics as a drawing together of insights from Linguistics and Conversation Analysis, we explore the grammar of proposals and the stances displayed by participants in making proposals in the context of joint activities, where a future or hypothetical activity is being put forth as something the speaker and recipient(s) might do together. Close examination of interactions among American English-speaking adults reveals four recurrent grammatical formats for issuing proposals: Let’s, Why don’t we, Modal Declaratives, and Modal Interrogatives. We argue that these four formats for doing proposing within a joint activity are used in socially distinct environments, contributing to a growing understanding of the fit between entrenched linguistic patterns and the social work they have evolved to do.

A conversation analytical study of story-openings in advice-giving episodes in doctoral research supervision meetings

Interactional functions of story-opening in everyday conversations across different languages have been widely examined in Conversation Analysis (CA). However, there is a paucity in research on story-openings in institutional talk. This paper addresses this research gap by examining how story-opening contributes to advice-giving in doctoral research supervision. It draws on a data corpus of 57 storytelling sequences produced by six supervisors during 25 hours of video-recorded supervision meetings at an Australian university. The analysis shows that story-opening supports the on-going advice-giving activity in two ways. First, it invokes the supervisor’s knowledge and experience, which functions to strengthen the advice under way. Second, it works toward building a joint understanding with the student, thereby serving the supervisor’s pursuit of the student’s acceptance of advice. These findings have significant implications for research on storytelling in institutional interaction, advice and supervision practices.

Implicature Analysis of Adel Al-Jubeir Political Interview on Yemen Campaign

Politicians use their political interviews to convey their thoughts towards their nations or others. This study aims to analyze conversation analysis and implicature of maxims being flouted by Adel Al-Jubeir regarding the Yemeni campaign, which started on 26th of March 2014. The study uses descriptive qualitative method. The data were institutional talk (Interview) conducted by Adel Al-Jubeir as IE (interviewee) and the journalist Wolf Blitzer as IR (interviewer) in the CNN channel in Washington. The data were analyzed according to Clayman and Heritage (2002) for conversation analysis and implicature of maxim based on Grice (1975). The results show two linguistic evidences. First, in institutional talks, conversation consists of three components, namely, opening, content, and closing. The opening includes the introduction, the content includes the announcement of the beginning of the campaign interface on Yemen and the Iranian nuclear program and its threat to Saudi Arabia, and the closing includes complete pairs (greetings). Second, for implicature analysis, the results show that Al-Jubeir being over-informative, stating more than required, represented with 82% of the quantity. He made a speech that he believed to be false, unjustified, and untruthful replies, representing 100% in the scale of quality. He gave irrelevant meaning to respond other participants’ utterances, representing 65% of maxim of relation. He gave unclear and indirect replies, representing 77% of maxim of manner. Besides, Al-Jubeir cooperated with IR. In addition, it can be summarized that he applied both particularized conversational and general implicature on political interview with some violation of the maxims as well.

Power and Humour in Institutional Talk – A Comparative Analysis

Power is a key concept in institutional talk as it structures both the discourse of that institution and the relationships within it. It influences the formation of identities and is highly indicative of the culture the institution promotes. Humour serves a wide range of functions within an organization and is closely related to power. The paper aims to investigate the relationship between power and humour in educational setting, namely a high school. It analyses two different meetings – a school board meeting and an evaluation meeting, both held in the same school; these meetings differ in terms of formality, number of participants, and purpose. The paper aims to identify the way humour is used by the more and less powerful participants in the meetings. The paper is structured into two parts – a theoretical presentation of power and humour and the data analysis. The practical part looks separately at each meeting and at the functions humour serves when used by the power holders and the subordinates.