Abstract
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.
Highlights
This study aims to illustrate the strategies adopted by interpreters in medical settings to convey medical terminology and to promote or, alternatively, exclude the interlocutors’ active participation in the encounter
Attention will be first paid to how medical terminology circulates in the consultation (Bersani-Berselli, 2009a, 2009b), by exploring the doctors’ use of medical terms and, second, to how the mediated interaction is organised in terms of turn-taking, sequences and communication exchanges, as well as shifts between such exchanges (Baraldi, 2009a, 2009b)
Being aware of the limitations of the qualitative approach to corpus analysis, which focuses on a limited set of data, this study might, be useful for promoting further research in these two directions so as to validate results obtained on a larger scale
Summary
This study aims to illustrate the strategies adopted by interpreters in medical settings to convey medical terminology and to promote or, alternatively, exclude the interlocutors’ active participation in the encounter. For these purposes, two mediated encounters are here examined from a qualitative point of view. The specific interactional organisation namely promotes, or else excludes, the participation of primary interlocutors in the encounter. In the author’s mind, such investigation is quite timely in view of the few in-depth studies on discursive interactions, able to show the contribution of all participants to the encounter’s success or failure. Respect, the linguistic analysis of transcribed interactions, as proposed hereafter, is crucial to detect structures of discursive behaviours
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