SOMATIZATION, SOCIAL SUPPORT, AND SEMANTICS IN CHINATOWN

这个项目是一个人类学的方法（1）的作用的研究， 缺乏社会支持的动态和过程中的躯体化， 纽约唐人街的新中国移民， 提出文化适应的方法， 支持，（2）研究中国疾病术语和其他 用于互联网的通信网络组件 表达痛苦，将这种手段翻译成西方模式 用于准确诊断躯体化是否存在问题，并且， 一般来说，帮助西方训练有素的卫生专业人员了解 与中国患者沟通。 本文采用定性的研究方法， 中国人如何管理影响，他们如何科普 压力，他们的家庭和社会关系，社区及其支持 系统，以及用于交流的中文概念术语 疾病和治疗在所有这些情况下。 活动包括深入的人种学调查，参与者 观察，并在非正式的家访采访。 样品包括 随机选择的家庭，社会和医疗机构的工作人员， 教堂和寺庙，还有社区领袖 部分样品由 的关键受访者确定为somatizers和他们的成员， 家庭 将制定和管理调查表， 疾病及其词汇的文化和个人意义 情感，内涵和外延语义的角度。 虽然这项研究是严格定性的，但总体目标是 确定文化上重要的变量，将建立 定量研究的可靠性超出了这个项目。

This project is an anthropological approach to (1) the study of the role of lack of social support in the dynamics and processes of somatization among the new Chinese immigrants in New York's Chinatown, with a consequent goal of suggesting ways of acculturation that provide new sources of social support, and (2) the study of Chinese illness terminology and other components of their communicational network used for the interactional expression of distress, the translation of such means into Western models for accurately diagnosing whether somatization is at issue, and, in general, ways of helping Western-trained health professionals understand communication with their Chinese patients. A qualitative method is applied to the cultural and linguistic contextualization of how the Chinese manage affect, how they cope with stress, their family and social relations, the community and its supportive systems, and the Chinese conceptual terminology for communicating about illness and healing in all these contexts. Activities include indepth ethnographic investigation, participant observation, and interviewing in informal home visits. The sample includes families selected at random, the personnel of social and medical agencies, churches and temples, and community leaders. Part of the sample consists of key respondents identified as somatizers and the members of their families. Questionnaires will be formulated and administered probing the cultural and personal meanings of illness and its vocabulary from the perspectives of affective, connotative, and denotative semantics. Although the research is strictly qualitative, an overall goal is to identify the culturally significant variables that will establish the reliability of quantitative research beyond this project.