How patients use gestures as a resource for expanding answers in medical encounters
| Panel: | P57 - Social Action Formats |
| Author: | Margutti, Piera |
| Author 2: | Renata Galatolo |
| Abstract: | |
| In this paper, we analyse how patients expand answers during the first phases of a medical encounter in an artificial limb centre. We focus on occurrences in which the act of showing (ostension) and the movement of part of the patient’s body are used as a resource to accomplish the expansion of responsive turns. Previous researches on turn expansions have shown that speakers need to mobilize verbal and prosodic resources to perform expanded answers (Ford and Thompson, 1996, Schegloff 1996, Raymond 2000 and 2003). Structure and functions of expansions have been explored in several institutional settings: medical interaction (Drew 2006, Stivers and Heritage 2001), news interviews (Clayman and Heritage 2002) and courtroom interaction (Adelsward et al. 1987, Luchjenbroers 1997, Galatolo and Drew 2006). All these studies agree in considering expanded answers an important conversational resource for the non-institutional party. The contribution of this study is to explore the role of gestures in structuring the patients’ expanded answers. Conversation Analysis is the theoretical and methodological framework, with a special focus on the interplay of gestural and verbal behaviour in constructing expansions. The corpus consists of 10 encounters in a centre specialized in artificial limbs. Data are multi-view video recordings of first encounters between patients - who have lost part of their upper limbs following an accident or/and a surgery- and the medical staff. The aim of the encounters is to establish the type of artificial limb consistent with the patient’s health conditions and needs. The analysis demonstrates that, as well as verbal and prosodic devices, gestures can be an important resource to accomplish turn expansions. In this setting, patients systematically use gestural devices to gain conversational space beyond the question-answer format. |
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