‘Bridging the gap’ – Communicative practices and facilitation of understanding in mediated medical consultations

Abstract

Constant migration flows from Africa and the East have caused an increase in the demand for public service interpreting and linguistic and cultural mediation across the national health services of Europe, where English as Lingua Franca is one of the languages often used to communicate with foreign patients. Previous research on the lexical strategies deployed during mediated medical visits mainly focused on the medical language varieties used by doctors and mediators, on how the translation of medical terminology can favour or hinder the interlocutors’ active participation or on patients’ understanding of medical terminology. Based on transcribed audio-recordings of mediated medical visits recorded in Italian public surgeries, this paper argues that, when the patients’ linguistic competences are evidently limited, mediators might resort to specific lexical strategies which are implemented to coordinate the interaction more effectively and ascertain that intersubjectivity is maintained. All data have been analysed using a conversation-analytic methodology, in order to outline which mediator lexical choices prove more effective in achieving interactional success. Two phenomena in particular have been investigated: the coordinating use of multi-part renditions of questions and the role of repetitions (Schegloff 1997) in mediated interaction sequences. Our final aim is to highlight how the use of such communicative strategies can prove particularly useful for mediators to gather and provide information more effectively, and to generally guarantee a positive outcome of the medical visit.