20 research outputs found
A comparison of professional medical consultations and dramatized ones
No full textWe present a multimodal study of dramatized medical consultations (cf. Turow, 2010), comparing them with actual medical consultations in relation to “patient-centred care” (Matthiessen, 2013; Slade et al., 2015). The breakthrough to scientific medicine starting around the 1830s led to the foregrounding of the “doctor’s gaze”, which is field-oriented, being concerned with expert diagnosis and treatment. The earlier reliance on information obtained in dialogue with the patient decreased in importance. But starting in the 1960s (e.g. Balint, 1969), practitioners have increasingly realized the fundamental importance of tenor considerations, including the use of interpersonal resources to enact rapport and empathy. This has been characterized as patient-centred care, and (in particular in long-term care situations) relationship-centred care (see Karimi, 2017), and the need for communication skills have come into focus (e.g. Kurtz, 2002). However, even though field goals and tenor goals complement one another and can be mutually supportive in medical consultations, there is still a tension between the two as far as doctors are concerned, and we will bring this out in our study of medical drama, House being a great example of a dramatic creation of a doctor who is grumpy (tenor: interpersonal) but brilliant (field: ideational), a kind of medical detective: Law (2017). Balint, Enid. 1969. “The possibilities of patient-centred medicine.” J.ROY. COLL. GEN. 17:269-276. Karimi, Neda. 2017. Patient-Centred Advanced Cancer Care: A Systemic Functional Linguistic Analysis of Oncology Consultations with Advanced Cancer Patients. Macquarie University: PhD thesis. Kurtz, Suzanne. 2002. “Doctor-patient communication: principles and practices.” Can. J.Neurol. Sci. 2002; 29: Suppl.: 23-29. Law, Locky Lok Hei. 2017. House M.D. and Creativity: A Corpus Linguistic Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis Approach. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University: PhD thesis. Matthiessen, Christian M.I.M. 2013. “Applying Systemic Functional Linguistics in healthcare contexts.” Text and Talk 33(4-5): 437–466. Slade, Diana, Marie Manidis, Jeannette McGregor, Hermine Scheeres, Eloise Chandler, Jane Stein-Parbury, Roger Dunstan, Maria Herke & Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen. 2015. Communication in Hospital Emergency Departments. Berlin: Springer. Turow, Joseph. 2010. Playing doctor: television, story-telling & media power. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press
Revisiting Halliday’s (1990) 'New ways of meaning: The challenge to applied linguistics': What has changed and what still needs to be done?
No full textAlmost three decades ago, M. A. K. Halliday, the founder of systemic functional
linguistics (SFL), presented a paper to AILA in Greece entitled New ways of meaning: a
challenge to applied linguistics (initially published as Halliday (1990)), introducing the
notion of an ecological study of language (Fill & Mühlhäusler, 2001). In this seminal
paper, Halliday emphasizes that “language does not passively reflect reality; language
actively creates reality” (cf. Halliday & Matthiessen, 1999) and that “lexicogrammar…
shapes experience and transforms our perceptions into meanings.” (p. 11) He identifies
three ‘problematic spheres’ as foreseeable challenges – language planning, the register of
scientific discourse, and the register of language and prejudice, involving the deployment
of resources within the system that constructs sexism, racism, growthism and classism;
and highlights the role of future applied linguists – “to use our theory of grammar… as a
metatheory for understanding how grammar functions as a theory of experience,” (p. 14)
and “to learn to educate five billion children … at such a time it is as well to reflect on
how language construes the world” (p. 30), one that contains numerous ecosystems
essential to the human survival.
Three decades later, at a time when we humans continue to destroy the only habitable
planet known in the universe, “ecolinguistics” has been established and recognized as a
field of research and activity (one involving ideological tensions, cf. Martin, 1986),
drawing centrally on Halliday (1990), but is his challenge being met outside the academic
community? We revisit the challenge and mission envisaged by Halliday in order to
answer the questions, “What has changed?” and “What still needs to be done?” We adopt
a corpus-driven systemic functional linguistics approach to investigate the questions in a
wide range of registers where environmental issues are being processed semiotically and
opinions are being formed, including examples from political discourse, news media,
social media, and late-night talk shows on topics surrounding climate change, renewable
energy, wildlife conservation and extinction, and economic inequality. We also pay
attention to texts likely to be influential in the life of children and their gradual construal
of their own world views with associated value systems (cf. Matthiessen, 2015)
Plausibility of Local Currency Contribution to the CMIM
Get PDFThis study assesses the plausibility of local currency contribution to the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) arrangement.
First, we investigate the (net) demand for local currencies in foreign exchange reserves because introducing local currency contribution is efficient only when sufficient demand exists. The main results are as follows. i) Substantial demand exists for local currencies in foreign exchange reserves. ii) The size of the demand for local currencies in foreign exchange reserves is large in comparison with the size of the maximum withdrawal from CMIM. iii) Net demand for local currencies in CMIM tends to be positive. Second, the stability of local currencies is analyzed by calculating the exchange market pressure index because costs of local currency contribution to CMIM arrangements can be high if local currencies are unstable. The results suggest that several currencies of ASEAN+3 members are as stable as popular non-U.S. international currencies for various sub-periods. The results in terms of stability of the currency, internationalization of currency, and liberalization of capital account transactions, indicate that the Japanese yen, Chinese yuan, and Korean won could first be considered eligible for local currency contribution to CMIM arrangements. Overall, the results may support the idea of introducing local currency contribution to CMIM arrangements.Financial support from AMRO is acknowledged. The research was a part of the research project on Local Currency Contribution to the CMIM. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this material represent the views of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO) or its member authorities. Neither AMRO nor its member authorities shall be held responsible for any consequence of the use of the information contained herein. We would like to thank an anonymous referee for valuation comments and suggestions
Dramatised medical consultations: What are they like and how can we use them
No full textHealthcare is a central part of life, and consequently contexts of healthcare have long been a fertile source of drama, including the long series of stage plays, films and TV series ranging, say, from Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid to Dominic Minghella’s Doc Martin. Medical dramas may involve many different dramatic elements, e.g. suspense, tragedy, comedy, romance; and they involve a wide range of healthcare practitioners with many different character traits and forms of bedside manner — e.g. idealists (e.g. The Citadel), sadists (e.g. The Marathon Man), misanthropes (e.g. House M.D.). Here we propose to examine examples of dramatizations of medical consultations, focussing on the portrayal of the doctorpatient relationships — against the background of studies of actual doctor-patient consultations, and the growing concern with the quality of care and safety, patient experiences and the focus on patient-centred or relationship centred care (e.g. Matthiessen, 2013; Slade et al., 2015).Dramatic portrayals of doctor-patient relationships are interesting in their own right as part of the study of plays, films and TV series as manifestations of verbal art with literary themes (cf. Hasan, 1985); but the study of such portrayals can also give us good examples to use in accounts of medical consultations e.g. in the context of in-service training or basic training, complementing re-enacted consultations based on authentic healthcare encounters. We will draw examples from dramatizations where the doctor’s attitude towards and engagement with the patient are crucial to the dramatic development (often manifestations of the tension between field-based goals and tenor-based goals in healthcare) — including instalments of MD House (see Law, 2017) and Priestley’s Last Holiday. Based on our analysis of such examples, we can develop an archive of illustrations of good and bad consultations. Supplementing work within “narrative medicine”, this is thus a contribution to “dramatized medicine” (cf. Bonamigo & Destefani, 2010; Turow, 2010)
Ways to move forward in translation studies a textual perspective
No full textDiscourse analysis has grown in applied linguistics since the 1970s and its application in translation studies became prominent in the 1990s (Munday 2012, 137). One of the topics in discourse analysis that has been given particular attention by translation scholars is the translation of choices within the textual metafunction, with particular focus on the role of Theme and its impact on thematic development in text. A number of studies have generated new insights into the translation of textual choices, for example concerning failures to recreate patterns of thematic progression. The growth of this area of research is a highly encouraging development since it had previously been largely neglected in translation studies (House 1997, 31). While these studies have focused on separate micro-issues in specific language pairs, the present article attempts to conduct a comprehensive review of existing studies on this topic in order to (i) highlight major topics addressed so far and (ii) make suggestions for further studies into this important area of translation from a systemic functional linguistic perspective.Department of Englis
Multilingual studies as a multi-dimensional space of interconnected language studies
No full textDepartment of EnglishDepartment of Chinese and Bilingual Studie
Prevention and resolution of foreign exchange crises in East Asia
Get PDFThis paper discusses mechanisms to prevent and resolve foreign exchange crises in East Asia. Policies and mechanisms at the country level as well as regional and global levels are discussed. Policies at the level of a particular country to prevent foreign exchange crises include the management of short-term foreign currency liabilities, the adequacy of reserves, and managing episodes of rapid short-term capital inflows. The author discusses the development of regional mechanisms for crisis prevention and resolution in conjunction with the global mechanisms, including the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) and the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM). The author then suggests how the CMIM can evolve into an integrated crisis prevention and resolution mechanism for East Asia
Complexities of emergency communication : clinicians’ perceptions of communication challenges in a trilingual emergency department
No full textAims and objectives: To understand the challenges that clinicians face in communicating with patients and other clinicians within a Hong Kong trilingual emergency department. Background: Effective communication has long been recognised as fundamental to the delivery of quality health care, especially in high-risk and time-constrained environments such as emergency departments. The issue of effective communication is particularly relevant in Hong Kong emergency departments, due to the high volume of patients and the linguistic complexity of this healthcare context. In Hong Kong, emergency department clinicians are native speakers of Chinese, but have received their medical training in English. The clinicians read and record virtually all of their medical documentation in English, yet they communicate verbally with patients in Cantonese and Mandarin. In addition, communication between clinicians occurs in spoken Cantonese, mixed with medical English. Thus, medical information is translated numerous times within one patient journey. This complex linguistic environment creates the potential for miscommunication. Design: A mixed-methods design consisting of a quantitative survey with a sequential qualitative interview. Methods: Data were collected in a survey from a purposive sample of 58 clinicians and analysed through descriptive statistics. Eighteen of the clinicians were then invited to take part in semi-structured interviews, the data from which were then subjected to a manifest content analysis. Results: Nearly half of the clinicians surveyed believed that medical information may be omitted or altered through repeated translation in a trilingual emergency department. Eighty-three per cent of clinicians stated that there are communication problems at triage. Over 40% said that they have difficulties in documenting medical information. Around 50% believed that long work hours reduced their ability to communicate effectively with patients. In addition, 34% admitted that they rarely or never listen to patients during a consultation. Conclusion: The findings reveal that the quality of communication in this Hong Kong emergency department is compromised by specific factors inherent in the linguistic complexity of Hong Kong emergency departments. These factors include the constant translation of medical information, inadequate documentation of medical information and significant professional and cultural pressures. Each of these issues increases the likelihood that healthcare communication will be difficult, incomplete or incorrect. This research provides empirical evidence for, and justifies the development of, an effective framework to enable clinicians to overcome communication challenges. Relevance to clinical practice: The findings of this study may shed light on the unique conditions faced by clinicians, particularly in relation to communication, in the complex trilingual healthcare context of an emergency department similar to those in Hong Kong, and provide potential policy solutions for barriers to improve communication in such settings.Department of EnglishSchool of Nursing2016-2017 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalbcr
Complexities of emergency communication : clinicians’ perceptions of communication challenges in a trilingual emergency department
No full text202312 bckwAccepted ManuscriptOthersThe Hong Kong Polytechnic UniversityPublishedGreen (AAM
