Konferensartikel

Physicians’ and patients’ use of <em>body-oriented gestures</em> in primary care consultations

Jennifer Gerwing
Health Services Research Unit (HØKH), Akershus University Hospital, Norway

Ladda ner artikel

Ingår i: Proceedings of the 4th European and 7th Nordic Symposium on Multimodal Communication (MMSYM 2016), Copenhagen, 29-30 September 2016

Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings 141:12, s. 85-93

Visa mer +

Publicerad: 2017-09-21

ISBN: 978-91-7685-423-5

ISSN: 1650-3686 (tryckt), 1650-3740 (online)

Abstract

Research on healthcare communication has focused little on the semiotics of gesture in interaction. This paper presents an analysis of how patients and physicians use gestures in actual consultations, focusing specifically on body-oriented gestures (i.e., those in which a part of the body, either through indication or demonstration, plays an integral role in the speaker’s meaning). Two publically-available training DVDs for general practice consultations provided 29 minutes of excerpts from actual patient-physician encounters between nine physicians and twelve patients. All gestures were located. Body-oriented gestures were analysed for their relationship to speech and function in the interactions. Results showed that 104/238 of patients’ gestures and 30/178 of physicians’ gestures were body-oriented. Gesture and speech conveyed complementary information suited to each modality. These gestures served a variety of functions (e.g., establishing mutual understanding, foreshadowing information that would be contributed later, providing cohesion between topics). Just as research on healthcare communication would benefit from further exploration of the semiotics of gesture use, these findings illustrate potential for basic research: healthcare interactions offer a practical arena for investigating how patients and physicians integrate gesture and speech as they discuss consequential topics such as symptom relief, diagnosis, decisions, and treatment plans.

Nyckelord

Inga nyckelord är tillgängliga

Referenser

Bavelas, Janet Beavin, Nicole Chovil, Douglas A. Lawrie, and Allan Wade. (1992). Interactive gestures. Discourse Processes, 15, 469-489.

Bavelas, Janet Beavin and Nicole Chovil. (2000). Visible acts of meaning. An integrated message model of language use in face-to-face dialogue. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 19, 163-194.

Calbris, Genevieve. (2011) Elements of meaning in gesture. The Netherlands: John Benjamins B.V.

Gerwing, Jennifer and Anne Marie Landmark Dalby. (2014) Gestures convey content: An exploration of the semantic functions of physicians’ gestures. Patient Education and Counseling, 96, 308-314.

Heath, Christian. (1989). Pain talk: The expression of suffering in the medical consultation. Social Psychology Quarterly, 113-125.

Heath, Christian. (2002). Demonstrative suffering: The gestural (re) embodiment of symptoms. Journal of Communication, 52(3), 597-616.

Hostetter, Autumn B. (2011). When do gestures communicate? A meta-analysis. Psychological bulletin, 137(2), 297.

Kendon, Adam. (1980) Gesticulation and speech: two aspects of the process of utterance. In: Key MR, editor. The relationship of verbal and nonverbal communication. The Hague: Mouton Publishers. p. 207–27.

Kendon, Adam. (1994). Do gestures communicate? A review. Research on language and social interaction, 27(3), 175-200.

McNeill, David. (1992) Hand and mind. What gestures reveal about thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Roberts, Celia, Becky Moss, and J. Stenhouse. (2003) ’ ‘Doing the Lambeth Talk’: Patients with Limited English and Doctors in General Practice: an educational resource’ DVD and handbook. Centre for Lan guage, Discourse and Communication, King’s College London. London: NHS London Post-graduate Deanery.

Roberts, Celia, Christine Atwell, and Stenhouse, J. (2006) ’Words in Action : an educational resource for doctors new to UK general practice’. London: NHS London Post-graduate Deanery.

Rowbotham, Samantha, Judith Holler, Donna Lloyd, and Alison Wearden. (2012). How do we communicate about pain? A systematic analysis of the semantic contribution of co-speech gestures in pain-focused conversations. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 36(1), 1-21.

Wittenburg, Peter, Hennie Brugman, Albert Russel, Alex Klassmann, and Han Sloetjes. (2006) ELAN: A professional framework for multimodality research. LREC 2006, fifth international conference on language resources and evaluation.

Citeringar i Crossref