Exploring evaluative, emotive and persuasive strategies in discourse by García-Gómez Antonio; Díez-Prados Mercedes (eds.)

Author:García-Gómez, Antonio; Díez-Prados, Mercedes (eds.) [Desconocido]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Publicaciones de la Universidad de Valencia (PUV)

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Conclusions

The pages of the present study have assessed the potential impact of fear appeals in health care communication on different topics and hence, the need to develop specific strategies to tackle them via interpreters when conducting a bilingual “trialogue”. Such evidence confirms the initial thesis of this work and sets the stage for clarifying interpreters’ patterns of behavior. To this effect, patients’ speech should be properly rendered to allow health care professionals to conduct their persuasion task successfully; likewise, medical staff’s verbal messages should not be significantly modified so that they cause the intended persuasive effect on the recipient.

In addition, this chapter lays another building block in the objective of clarifying the interpreter’s approach to particular conversational aspects that may arise during “trialogues” conducted in health care settings. In this vein, apart from allowing us to develop specific guidelines to tackle these issues during a triangular interaction, the information presented throughout this study involves an added value for interpreters. Knowing the specific features of certain types of discourse (fear appeals in this case) permits them to foresee some aspects of the upcoming conversation; therefore, if they get enough details of a future assignment, they can work on improving or rehearsing some discursive elements almost inherent to the situation they will face (e.g. the use of conditional sentences and the particularities of its translation from Spanish into English).

Furthermore, both fear appeals and their responses may seem partly dependable on the speaker. However, with regard to medical staff’s suggestions, all participants agree that such threats are commonly used, slightly modified by each speaker’s personal touch. Thus, since linguistic variations would not make a real difference, conclusions are solid enough to be considered as highly transferable, a factor that reinforces the value of the previous pages in spite of the limitations it may present at first glance.

To conclude, it is fair to outline the limitations that this study evinces. Firstly, the number of participants (a total of eighteen people) which is reasonable for a starting point but could be increased in further studies. The same happens with the medical institutions involved. Future research on the same issue may include, for example, centers from different regions/countries. Secondly, the fear appeals analyzed focused on a single issue (smoking); consequently, subsequent research may revolve around other health problems such as obesity, AIDS and so forth. Finally, another element that could be analyzed in further studies is the potential cultural clashes when interpreting fear appeals, especially when prospective participants in the “trialogue” belong to societies with sharper differences than those existing amongst Spaniards, Americans, Canadians and British.

However, these elements should not undermine the value of these pages which offer a great potential for transferability. The ideas presented throughout this chapter could (with the necessary adaptations) be applied to other health care environments where English and Spanish are the core languages of communication. In this vein, emphasis could be placed, for example, in the United States, a country with high levels of Spanish speaking immigration. Thus, it is

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