Issue 77/2013
Unterschiede in der Kommunikation bei Wahl- und KassenärztInnen.
Regina Geisler
This paper summarizes the results of a sociolinguistic analysis of doctor-patient-communication in primary care encounters. Primarily issued as a diploma thesis in 2011, the following paper focuses on variations in doctor-patient-interaction which might be caused by different types of health insurance. This analysis aims to determine to what extend the existence of a “two-tier health care system” can be proven linguistically. Using conversation-analytic methods, nine different authentic conversations between doctors and patients in primary care encounters were analysed using audio recordings as well as transcripts. The selected data originates from a former project, conducted by Menz and Plansky (forthcoming), which contains about 193 conversations between doctors and patients in primary care encounters. The material was collected in different locations within Austria and does not only contain audio recordings, but has also been transferred into written form. The analysis was conducted focussing on three components of doctor-patient-communication:
• opening and closing sequences,
• talk during physical examination,
• doctors’ reactions to questions of patients.
The results show that there are indeed qualitative variations between doctor-patient-interactions caused by different types of health care insurance. Typically those patients who are treated as “private patients” are integrated actively during the whole encounter. Doctors provide more possibilities to ask questions and generally give more information throughout the interaction, especially during physical examinations. As a consequence, those patients have a better chance to be empowered in their position, which leads to a higher rate of compliance among this group of patients. The results lead to the conclusion that while it might be easier for private patients to efficiently communicate with physicians during their consultations, successful interaction is not strictly limited to this group. Empowering patients is therefore not confined to those doctors who have more time to spend with patients, but can be realised in temporally restricted encounters. Ultimately, it mostly depends on the doctors’ willingness and competence to strengthen patients’ status and advocate better opportunities to actively participate during their consultations.
Framing und Reproduktion von Hegemonie: Öffentlichkeit bei den britischen Protesten 2011.
Sarah Ertl
This paper focuses on the August 2011 protests in London and other cities of Great Britain and shows how media covered the actions during the first week of protest that has most im-portance for first formation of opinion in public sphere. To discuss the data, a theoretical in-troduction firstly puts the framing of actions in connection with hegemonic power relations that are reproduced in society and take place via communication in the public sphere. An em-pirical survey concentrates secondly on the framing of activists and actions and the propor-tions of the actors being quoted in media. The linguistic framing analysis of articles in the most important Austrian newspapers highlights the adscription of roles to activists in the dis-course about the very protests. Results show a tendency of media to focus in their action de-scription on a marginalization of activists a criminalization of actions. Therefore thirdly the involvement of journalism into an autonomously spreading hegemony that works in favour of elitarian power maintenance will be discussed. Furthermore, the problem of long and short term exclusion of certain groups in society (the activists) the public sphere and the delibera-tions process will be pointed out.
Finalitätsantizipierende Anstiege in der Intonation des französischen Aussagesatzes.
Ingeborg Jandl
The paper explores French prosody with a focus on the final pitch contours in declarative sentences. In her article of 2002, Jacquline Vaissière states that French finality is not only indicated by a local fall on the very last syllable, but also by a high or high-rising tone at the end of the penultimate word, which serves to emphasise the final lowering of the voice. These findings are examined systematically in an empirical study based on a corpus of 15 test items with final COD-constructions. The constructions are composed of an adjective and a noun, and are read out by 10 native speakers. The data was analysed by means of the sound analysis programme Praat and by ear. The analysis showed that the assumptive rise was realised in 79% of the recordings only, wherein the average height of 3.3 st turned out to be higher than expected. In addition, the study points out possible modulation factors such as word length, their sequence and variations depending on the respective speakers.
Die russische Orthographie - Typologie der Abweichungen.
Petra Poppernitsch
The present article – an extract of the thesis “The Russian orthography. Typology of deviations” published in Graz 2011 – deals with the Russian orthography in general and the typology of current deviations from the orthographic norm in special. A spelling analysis of online postings to articles of the Russian newspapers "Argumenty i fakty", "Izvestija", "Komsomol‘skaja pravda" and "Vedomosti" discovered 867 deviations which could be categorized the following way: vowel mistakes, consonant mistakes, mistakes related to the hard and the soft sign, mistakes in compound and separated words, mistakes in capitalization, typing errors and other deviations (grammatical, lexical, deliberate as well as spelling mistakes in foreign words). Those deviations’ analysis finally suggests a tendency towards the phonetic spelling.
Das Slowenische in Kärnten aus soziolinguistischer Sicht.
Fabian Gottfried Prilasnig
This research project should be a contribution to the research on the Slovene language in Carinthia with the focus on language choice. The most important question is the use of Slovene or German in what situation. Therefore, the following points are in the foreground of the investigation:
1. Domain of the conversation
2. Topic of the conversation
3. Function of the conversation
The subject of language choice in Carinthia is not investigated well by Slavic sociolinguistics and therefore it is very interesting for the scientific community. Among other things, the language use as well as the manner of code-switching will be investigated. However, the focus of investigation is concentrated on language choice, that means in what situation speakers use either Slovene or German. Furthermore, the question will be asked when which variety of the Slovene language (standard, dialect or vernacular) is used.