Yes/no interrogatives in celiac disease patients' mealtime talk
| Panel: | P87 - Doing Epistemics: Knowledge in Action |
| Author: | Te Molder, Hedwig |
| Abstract: | |
| This paper examines a particular use of yes/no interrogatives (YNIs) in mealtime conversations among Dutch families with a celiac disease (‘gluten intolerance’) patient. Celiac disease is a disorder of the small intestine caused by abnormal responses to gluten proteins. Currently the only available treatment is a lifetime of gluten-free eating. The data are taken from a corpus of 26 hours of audiotaped mealtime interactions (5 families with young patients, 2 with adults). YNIs prefer one response over the other by inviting (dis)agreement to a candidate answer (Raymond 2003). This paper focuses on how YNIs are used to manage the tension between the responsibility for a restrictive diet and the patient’s (dis)likes as a matter of self-determination. As for the data with young patients, it is shown how YNIs are sequentially positioned as to secure ultimate acceptance of the food in terms of its tastiness rather than because it is gluten-free and allowed. In contrast to what we find in other mealtime data open-ended taste queries are missing. The offering of gluten-free food is followed by often repeated requests for confirmation of its tastiness, even after the child has already given evidence of his positive stance towards the food. Conversely there are no queries into tastiness before the safety of the food has been established. By treating the taste matter as ‘in question’ despite apparently affirmative answers, the Y/N taste queries work to establish a ‘troubled’ offering of food to the child. In contrast, in the mealtime conversations with adult patients, we see how YNIs are deployed mainly to confirm the epistemic authority of the patient in deciding what to like and to eat. Throughout the dataset, YNIs are used as to manage self-determination under the denominator of taste: if you cannot eat what you like, like what you can. |
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