Abstract Summary
On the basis of a comparative corpus of authentic German and Russian therapy-planning talks, it will be asked how German and Russian patients cope with the emotional stress caused by that severe illness. The focus will be on subjective theories of illness as well as on how, when and regarding which topical aspects emotional verbalizations of patients occur.
Abstract :
Cancer is an illness that is still that "unsolved riddle" causing "thoroughly old-fashioned kinds of dread" in patients that has been described more than forty years ago by Sontag (1978: 6). The reaason is that neither are the causes of cancer fully understood today nor have the treatments become unvaryingly successful or free of side-effects. For these reasons, subjective theories of illness as well as strong emotional responses are typical reactions by patients who are explained their proposed cancer treatments. Two corpora of authentic spoken therapy-planning interactions in German and Russian oncology stations will be used: the German data were collected as part of a research project funded by the German Cancer Foundation (http://krebshilfe.sprache-interaktion.de) and the Russian data as part of a collaborative project (Fedorovskaja et al. in prep.) between Wolfgang Imo (University of Hamburg) and Victoria Fedorovskaja (Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University). On the basis of these two corpora, it will be asked what the subjective theories of illness concerning cancer (e.g. causes of cancer; metaphorical conceptions of cancer; notions concerning alternative treatments etc.) of German in contrast to Russian patients are and how, during which phases of the talks and regarding which topics German and Russian patients verbalize their emotions or even 'fish' for consoling activities by the doctors (Imo 2017; Zhura 2008).
Literature:
Birkner, Karin (2006): Subjektive Krankheitstheorien im Gespräch. In: Gesprächsforschung - Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion 7, 152-183.
Fedorovskaja, Victoria, Wolfgang Imo and Marina I. Seakcheva (in prep.): Sprechende Medizin: Kommunikationstrainings für Medizinstudierende mit Deutsch als Fachsprache anhand authentischer Gesprächsdaten.
Imo, Wolfgang (2017): Trösten: eine sprachliche Praktik in der Medizin. In: Muttersprache 3, 197-225.
Sontag, Susan (1978): Illness as metaphor. New York.
Zhura, Viktoriya Valentinovna (2008): Diskursivnaya kompetentsiya vracha v ustnom meditsinskom obshchenii (Discourse competence of doctors and patients in spoken medical interactsion). Volgograd.
