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Managing multiple actions through multimodality: Doctors' involvement in interpreter-mediated interactions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2011

Sergio Pasquandrea
Sergio Pasquandrea
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Scienze del Linguaggio, Università per Stranieri di Perugia (Italy), Piazza Fortebraccio, 4, 06123 Perugia, Italysergio.pasquandrea@yahoo.it
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Abstract

Many studies (Heath 1984b, 1986; Robinson 1998; Robinson & Stivers 2001; Greatbach 2006; Frers 2009) have shown that, while interacting with their patients, doctors fulfill several tasks (speaking, reading, writing prescriptions, reporting data on the computer, etc.) through an interplay of diverse multimodal resources (speech, gesture, body posture, gaze, object manipulation, etc.). In comparison, multimodality in interpreter-mediated medical encounters has received scant attention. This contribution examines a corpus of interactions involving Italian doctors, Chinese patients, and an interpreter. Having to manage multiparty and multitask conversations with patients with whom no direct communication is possible, doctors are forced to rely heavily on multimodality. The analysis here shows how the simultaneous actions performed by the doctors are coordinated through the use of multiple modalities. The outcomes on the global organization of interpreter-mediated interaction are also discussed. (Conversation analysis, doctor-patient interaction, interpreting, multitasking, multimodality)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , September 2011 , pp. 455 - 481
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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