Interruptions, status and gender in medical interviews: the harder you brake, the longer it takes

Abstract

Discourse research has repeatedly dealt with interruptions as indicators of power and dominance, especially in the context of gender and status. But little research has used doctor—patient communication as a database. From a total of 576 medical interviews, 48 were selected for a qualitative context-bound in-depth analysis of interruptions and were evaluated statistically. Our findings support a differentiated interpretation: regardless of gender, physicians use more non-supportive interruptions than patients ( p = 0.000); patients failed to interrupt physicians more frequently than vice versa ( p = 0.034), even more so with senior physicians than with doctors-in-training ( p = 0.003). Here, status seems to be the decisive variable. However, both female patients and female doctors produced more supportive interruptions than males ( p = 0.013). Furthermore, contrary to intuition, we were able to show that interviews take longer the more physicians interrupt. The article closes with a critical discussion concerning the conjunction of qualitative and quantifying methods within discourse analysis.