Full Title: Comparative Perspectives on Doctor-Patient Interactions
Short Title: CDPI

Date: 03-Oct-2023 - 05-Oct-2023
Location: University of Bayreuth and online, Germany
Contact Person: Ahmad Izadi
Meeting Email: [email protected]

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics; Applied Linguistics; Clinical Linguistics; Discourse Analysis; Pragmatics

Call Deadline: 31-May-2023

Meeting Description:

Conference organised by AvH-Research group linkage team “Interactive Dynamics and Contexts of Nigerian and German Doctor-Patient-Encounters”

Conference committee: Tosin Adeyehun (University of Ibadan/Nigeria), Oluwaseun Amusa (University of Ibadan/Nigeria), Alexandra Groß (University of Bayreuth/Germany), Ahmad Izadi (University of Bayreuth/Germany and Islamic Azad University, Abadan, Iran.)

“Comparative Perspectives on Doctor-Patient Interactions” (CDPI) is a hybrid international conference organised by the research group linkage team on the project “Interactive Dynamics and Contexts of Nigerian and German Doctor-Patient-Encounters” (funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation) to be hosted at the University of Bayreuth, Germany and in the virtual space, from 3rd to 5th of October 2023.

Within Conversation Analysis (CA) and Linguistic Pragmatics, the investigation of doctor-patient interactions has become one of the most dominant branches of research and “has expanded to include interactions in a variety of specialty care settings as well as in allied fields such as pharmacy and dentistry” (Teas Gill & Roberts 2013: 575). While studies in Medical CA (e.g. Heritage 2017, Fatigante, et al. 2020) or Medical Pragmatics (e.g. (Odebunmi 2021) usually include – at least implicitly – a comparative perspective in the way that they relate their own results to (previous) findings in corresponding or similar interaction types, only few studies have explicitly compared conversational phenomena across data sets originating from different linguistic/cultural/national contexts until now. Exceptions are e.g. the studies by Bergen, et al. (2018) and Boluwaduro & Groß (2019). The former investigates differences between US American and British interactions with regards to the manifestation of patients’ resistance against treatment recommendation showing that distinct behavioural trends may reflect distinct cultural norms of good-practices. Boluwaduro & Groß (2019) compare the conversational impact of the “How are you (doing)” opening question in Nigerian and German HIV consultations and conversely show that one identical practice might have distinct conversational consequences and thus contextualise distinct norms.

In order to shift the attention to this underexposed but promising research area we call for contributions that explicitly take a comparative perspective on doctor-patient interactions within Medical Conversation Analysis, Discourse Analysis, Linguistic Pragmatics, Sociolinguistics, Corpus Linguistics and Health Communication. We look forward to proposals that explore doctor-patient interactions focusing on interactional phenomena from a comparative view in the sense that they compare linguistic choices, conversational practices and actions within the same interaction type (such as HIV consultations, first consultations at the general practitioner etc.) in different linguistic/cultural/national contexts.

Comparative investigations may also be triggered by emphasising the contextualization of social factors like gender, social class and educational background, the role of interpreter-mediation in multilingual interactions compared to monolingual interactions, as well as the relevance of the medical setting (in vs. out patient etc.). We welcome contributions which relate their analyses to theoretical concepts of health science, such as paternalism/humanism, shared decision making, informed choice (e.g. Albus & Koerfer 2015), asymmetry (e.g. Pilnick & Dingwall 2011), subjective illness theories (e.g. Birkner & Vlassenko 2015) or to pragmatic theories, including face theories (e.g., Arundale 2020; Goffman 1967), politeness theories (Locher & Watts 2015; Kadar & Haugh 2013; Brown & Levinson 1978, identity theories (e.g., Simon 2004), common ground theories (e.g. Clark & Brennan 1991; Kecskes & Zhang 2009) etc.

Call for Papers:

Abstracts (max. 350 words, plus references) should clearly indicate the objective(s), methodology and results of the study. Presentations will typically be scheduled in sessions of 30 minutes allocated to each individual presentation. We also plan a poster session conducted in the virtual space. Submissions should be sent to the conference committee via email at [email protected], and should include information whether they are meant for an oral presentation or a poster.

Important information:
- Conference venue: Hybrid meeting: hosted at the University of Bayreuth and in the virtual space (via zoom)
- Conference dates: from 3rd to 5th of October 2023
- Deadline for abstract submission: 31st May 2023
- Notification of acceptance: 30th June 2023
- Conference language: English
- Registration fee: None (The conference is funded by Alexander von Humboldt Foundation)