Conversational Techniques Used in Transferring Knowledge between Medical Experts and Non-experts

Abstract

A B S T R AC T Unlike a great deal of research on expert/non-expert communication, most of which is based on written materials, this article focuses on face-to-face communication. The analysis is based on a large corpus of transcribed recordings of medical seminars in rehabilitation centres and of interviews with chronically ill patients suffering from heart conditions. The focus is on procedures of illustration, which are often combined with reformulation procedures. Four main types are described: metaphors, exemplification, 'scenarios', concretization. Whatever the type of illustration used, participants in face-to-face interaction show a marked preference for procedures which relate abstract medical information to everyday life and experience.After a brief outline of the theoretical approach adopted the analysis proceeds in two steps: first, the emphasis is on techniques employed by the 'experts', then on those used by 'non-experts', i.e. patients. This is followed by an examination of the question how the roles of expert and non-expert are constituted in and by interaction.

Plagiarism Meets Paraphrasing: Insights for the Next Generation in Automatic Plagiarism Detection

“…Paraphrase typologies have been addressed in different fields, including discourse analysis, linguistics, and computational linguistics, which has originated typologies that are very different in nature. Typologies coming from discourse analysis classify paraphrases according to the reformulation mechanisms or communicative intention behind them (Gülich 2003;Cheung 2009), but without focusing on the linguistic nature of paraphrases themselves, which, in contrast, is our main focus of interest. From the perspective of linguistic analysis, some typologies are strongly tied to concrete theoretical frameworks, as the case of Meaning-Text Theory (Mel'čuk 1992;Milićević 2007).…”

Popularization Discourse and Knowledge about the Genome

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Scholarly soundbites

“…In the linear diffusion or deficit model of science communication, knowledge transfer is seen as a one-way process from scientist to (semi)-lay public via a mediator, usually a journalist, and a dumbing down of the original source. In preference to this reductionist view, we adopt here the approach of several scholars (e.g., Jacobi 1999;Ciapuscio 2003;Gülich 2003) who see expert-lay communication as a recontextualization of the initial source for different addressees, which can be accomplished either by the scientists themselves or through collaborative 'work' with journalists. In this process, several types of discursive strategies can be used.…”