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Summary 'How strange is the patient to me?' Physicians' attitudes and expectations toward treating patients with a migration backgroundObjectives: Undergraduate and postgraduate training in cultural competence remains a challenging issue. It might be useful to integrate culturally sensitive learning objectives in existing curricula. As part of a needs assessment, this qualitative study examined the prototypical experiences in clinical routines with patients with a migration background. Methods: Twenty physicians took part in half-structured narrative interviews, which were then analyzed by linguistic-ethnographic conversation analysis. Results:The main reasons for difficulties in patient-physician relation proved to be language barriers. Assignments of professional interpreters were rated critically. Physicians attributed the responsibility for successful communication mainly to the patient. The physicians saw little need for training in cultural competence. Conclusions:The integration of learning objectives related to cultural sensibility in existing curricula would seem to be useful, especially because the physicians interviewed reported little need for additional training on their own. The importance of implied negative attitudes and stereotypes in creating a culturally sensitive approach should be taken into account.

How do words mean? What is the nature of meaning? How can we grasp a word’s meaning? The frame-semantic approach developed in this book offers some well-founded answers to such long-standing, but still controversial issues. Following Charles Fillmore’s definition of frames as both organizers of experience and tools for understanding, the monograph attempts to examine one of the most important concepts of Cognitive Linguistics in more detail. The point of departure is Fillmore’s conception of “frames of understanding” – an approach to (cognitive) semantics that Fillmore developed from 1975 to 1985. The envisaged Understanding Semantics (“U-Semantics”) is a semantic theory sui generis whose significance for linguistic research cannot be overestimated. In addition to its crucial role in the development of the theoretical foundations of U-semantics, corpus-based frame semantics can be applied fruitfully in the investigation of knowledge-building processes in text and discourse.

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A multimodal construction is said to be a conventional pairing of a complex form, comprising at least a verbal and a kinetic element, with a specific meaning or a specific function. Do we need a new constructional approach to account for such multimodal constructions? What are the challenges to account for multimodality? The aim of this contribution is to provide a precise notion ‘multimodal construction’ and, on this basis, to indicate possible pathways for future investigations. The paper opts for cautiously extending the scope of existing constructional approaches in order to include non-linguistic meaningful behavior. In particular, it is argued that even though Construction Grammar invites for treating multimodal on a par with linguistic constructions, there is a huge lack of substantial empirical support to arrive at a more detailed and data-based understanding of the nature of multimodal constructions.