Interpreting in intercultural medical interviews
| Author: | Sator, Marlene |
| Abstract: | |
| This poster will present results of a current project on the specific problems and challenges in medical interviews with patients with a migrant background, who have little knowledge of German and/or a different socio-cultural background. The study is situated in the methodological framework of conversation and discourse analysis. The data to be used are 28 medical interviews in a headache outpatient ward and consists of two different types of triadic constellations of intercultural communication: 1)interactions between doctors, patients and un-trained (ad-hoc) interpreters (mostly accompanying family members) 2)interactions between doctors, patients and a professional interpreter Drawing on the basic mechanisms of turn taking (Sacks et al. 1974) and their specific manifestations in institutionally organized discourse (Drew/Heritage 1992, Drew/Sorjonen 1997) as well as on Goffman's (1981) concepts of 'participation framework' and 'footing', the study will deal with the question of how participant roles are constituted, how ad-hoc interpreting is interactively organized and in which local contexts interpretations are given and in which not. Including results from discourse-based research (e.g. Bolden 2000, Bührig/Meyer 2004, Angelelli 2004), the semantic-functional relationships between the interactional moves of the patients and the interpreted versions will be examined. It will be shown how ad-hoc interpreters perform independent communicative acts and give reduced and content-oriented interpretations, do not mediate patients' concerns adequately and also bring in their own concerns. It will be argued that ad-hoc interpreting by family members tends to support the 'voice of medicine' (Mishler 1984), whereas professional interpreting tends to support the patients' 'voice of lifeworld'. |
|
