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

描述（申请人提供的摘要）：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，实证研究深入到介导（解释）人类互动的复杂性，在医疗环境中是稀缺的，许多研究确实存在严重的局限性时，考虑到目前的语言学理论框架。语言少数民族患者涌入美国卫生系统导致了医学研究人员对医疗保健口译员的兴趣，近年来进行了一些研究，以比较临时口译员与“专业”口译员的表现;分析口译员造成的误解和沟通障碍;并制定方法来测试医疗口译员的语言能力和口译技能。这些研究是孤立进行的，很少有来自语言学的投入，而语言学对互动的研究已经进行了几十年。他们未能梳理除了重要的变量相关的口译员和提供者的个人资料，并在医疗保健的特定交际活动的international目标。本研究的目的是通过揭示一些潜在的障碍（语言贡献者），以改善医疗保健提供给语言少数民族患者（讲西班牙语和美国手语的人，特别是）的访问。这些贡献者将通过定性和定量的数据收集方法，包括视频记录的供应商在得克萨斯州南部的一家大医院的患者遇到确定。还将收集提供者，患者和口译员的人口统计数据，并探讨他们的个人资料和语言因素之间的关系。本研究的理论基础是社会语言学和会话分析理论。

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.