An Analysis of the Impact of Linguistic and Paralinguistic Variables in Mediated

描述（摘要由申请人提供）：在限制获得医疗保健的财务、结构和个人障碍中，语言是最持久的障碍之一。尽管如此，深入研究医疗保健环境中介导（解释）人类互动复杂性的实证研究很少，而且许多确实存在的研究在当前语言理论框架下考虑时存在严重的局限性。美国卫生系统中大量涌入的少数语言患者引起了医学研究人员对医疗口译人员的兴趣，近年来进行了许多研究，将临时口译人员的表现与“专业”口译人员进行了比较；分析由口译员造成的误解和沟通障碍；并开发测试医疗口译员语言能力和口译技能的方法。这些研究都是孤立进行的，很少有语言学的投入，而语言学在相互作用方面的研究已经进行了几十年。他们未能梳理出与口译员和提供者的概况相关的重要变量，以及医疗保健中特定交流事件的互动目标。本研究的目的是通过揭示医疗保健患者与提供者互动的一些潜在障碍（语言贡献者），改善向语言少数患者（特别是西班牙语和美国手语使用者）提供的医疗保健服务。将通过定性和定量数据收集方法确定这些贡献者，包括在德克萨斯州南部的一家大医院录制提供者与患者接触的视频。还将收集提供者、患者和口译员的人口统计数据，并探讨他们的资料与导致误解的语言因素之间的关系。本研究以互动社会语言学和会话分析的概念为基础。

DESCRIPTION (Abstract Provided by Applicant): Of the financial, structural, and personal barriers that limit access to healthcare, language is one of the most persistent. Despite this, empirical research delving into the complexities of mediated (interpreted) human interaction in healthcare settings is scarce, and many of the studies that do exist pose serious limitations when considered in the light of current linguistic theoretical frameworks. The influx of language-minority patients into the U.S. health system has led to a flurry of interest in the healthcare interpreter by medical researchers, with a number of studies in recent years being conducted to compare the performance of ad hoc interpreters to "professional" interpreters; to analyze misunderstanding and breakdown in communication caused by interpreters; and to develop approaches to testing the language proficiency and interpreting skills of healthcare interpreters. These studies have been carried out in isolation, with little input from the science of linguistics, in which studies in interaction have been conducted for decades. They fail to tease apart important variables related to the profile of the interpreter and provider, and to the interactional goals of particular communicative events in healthcare. The purpose of this research is to improve healthcare access provided to language minority patients (speakers of Spanish and ASL, in particular) by revealing some of the underlying obstacles (linguistic contributors) to healthcare patient-provider interaction. These contributors will be identified through qualitative and quantitative data collection approaches, including video recorded provider-patient encounters at a large hospital in south Texas. Demographics will also be collected on providers, patients, and interpreters and relationships between their profiles and linguistic contributors to miscommunication will be explored. This research is grounded in concepts derived from interactional sociolinguistics and conversation analysis.