Verbal play on the hospital ward: Solidarity or power?

Language matters: towards an understanding of silence and humour in medical education

“…Research from these perspectives employs observation, interview and survey methods to study episodes and perceptions of humour or laughter, and applies a range of qualitative and quantitative analytical tools. By contrast, social constructionist approaches treat humour and laughter as forms of mutual meaning making; the growing tradition of pragmatics‐based research takes this theoretical stance, 55 with researchers tackling issues such as the role of humour in minimising the impact of face‐threatening acts between speakers 85 . These approaches require the audio‐recording of naturally occurring conversation for the microanalysis, using conversational or discourse analysis of precise linguistic features including tonality, interjection and pacing 59,67,86 .…”

“…By contrast, social constructionist approaches treat humour and laughter as forms of mutual meaning making; the growing tradition of pragmatics-based research takes this theoretical stance, 55 with researchers tackling issues such as the role of humour in minimising the impact of facethreatening acts between speakers. 85 These approaches require the audio-recording of naturally occurring conversation for the microanalysis, using conversational or discourse analysis of precise linguistic features including tonality, interjection and pacing. 59,67,86 Reflecting the complexity of the phenomenon, studies may utilise multiple theoretical and analytical lenses for a fulsome exploration; the socio-linguistic project reported by Holmes et al, for example, combines critical discourse analysis and quantitative analysis of a large dataset of naturally occurring conversations.…”

Of babies and bath water: Is there any place for Austin and Grice in interpersonal pragmatics?

“…Secondly, the fact that Brown and Levinson only use isolated utterances for exemplification results in their model being flawed. When it is applied to sequences of talk (discourse), it turns out that it does not have the predictive power claimed for it (for example, Brown and Levinson's model cannot predict politeness behaviour, although it may be able to account for it, or describe it) and that certain crucial concepts, such as the distinction between negative and positive politeness are problematic (see, for example, Grainger, 2004).…”

Introduction: Applying politeness research to health care communication

“…Backhaus' study compares data from his own ethnographic research in an elderly care home in Japan with care home data analyzed by researchers in exactly the same setting in South Africa (Makoni and Grainger 2002), Germany (Sachweh 2003) and Britain (Grainger 2004). He finds a correlation between the different forms of linguistic politeness that elderly care home workers use across all of these different cultural settings and languages, focusing in particular upon the strategies of giving praise, inclusive joking and exclusive joking.…”