The social and material in action in clinical dentistry: Micro-analytic studies from Asia

Abstract

The issue of ‘place-specific’ dimensions of embodiment has been raised in multiple micro-ethnographic workplace studies. While micro-level video analysis has supported nuanced understandings of interactions in general healthcare, given its distinctively interwoven organization (general consultation combined with surgical intervention), linguistic and physical complexities (multiple configurations of actors/ bodies and physical tools) dentistry is a relatively new and promising area of interactional research. While the field of dental public health has studied dental communication topics such as dental anxiety and dental fear, this has been, in the majority, from a psychometric perspective. Research from an ethnographic base is much smaller; however, ethnomethodological studies have been growing with video-based research in Hong Kong (Bridges et al, 2010, 2011, 2015) exploring dental interactions to identify turn-designs in instruction-giving and reassuring in Cantonese as well as exploring the complexities of mediated interpretation in Cantonese-English interactions. Related approaches in the UK (Hindmarsh et al., 2011) have examined talk and bodily conduct in dental apprenticeship. The proposed IPrA 2019 panel will be the first to draw together current micro-analytic research in clinical dental communication in Asia and will bring together a range of video-based corpuses of clinical recordings. In doing so, we will examine the current intersections of these ethnomethodologically-oriented research programmes and explore the potential future directions of bringing these currently independent studies into a coherent research agenda. The proposed panel will share papers from both doctoral students and experienced researchers working on Asian data sets. To date, we have identified three corpuses but more will be welcome following the general call. The Hong Kongteam (Bridges, Xu, Yiu, Wong, McGrath, Zayts, Nair) will draw on a large corpus of video recordings of pediatric and adult consultations to examine cross-linguistic clinical dental communication. Specifically, micro-analytic examination of the complexity of multi-party formulations in dental operative contexts where mediated interpretations by surgical assistants are the norm. The Japanese corpus (Saikaida) explores the multiparty formulation of embodied interactions between a dentist and a patient, or a dentist and a dental hygienist through sequential analysis, especially how a dentist/ dental hygienist uses dental equipment to achieve their medical examination or treatment. The Chinese corpus (Guo & Streeck) examines how patients’ dental anxiety and fear (DAF) and bodily sensations (pain) are expressed or displayed and how they are responded to in a sequentially relevant manner by both dental health care providers and patients in cross-cultural contexts. Theoretically, this panel will contribute to ongoing developments in the field of language and social interaction drawing implications for sociomateriality, intersubjectivity and intercorporeality (Meyer et al. 2017). • Bridges, S.M, Drew, P., et al. (2015). Interpreter-mediated dentistry, Social Science & Medicine, 132. • Bridges, S., McGrath, C., et al (2010). ‘Reassuring’ during clinical examinations. JAPC. 20(2). • Bridges S.M., Yiu C.K.Y & McGrath C.P.J. (2011). Multilingual interactions in clinical dental education. Communication and Medicine, 8(3). • Hindmarsh, J., Reynolds, P., & Dunne, S. (2011). Exhibiting understanding: The body in apprenticeship. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(2). • Meyer, C., Streeck, J. & Jordan, J. S. (2017). Intercorporeality. OUP.