Inference pragmatics of the interjection hm in stress interaction (based on the medical consultations of an oncologist and a cancer patient)

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the study of verbal communication of a physician and a patient as part of institutional medical discourse. The analysis was conducted based on the material of 12 transcripts of the dialogues in German language between oncologists and female patients diagnosed with breast cancer. Utterances of patients with a vocal gesture expressed by the interjection hm are the subject of this study. The purpose of the article is to determine the communicative functions in the intentional structure of the analyzed dialogues, taking the situational, social and cultural context into account, as well as the correlation with the physician’s remarks, and syntactic position hm in the utterance. The article presents quantitative analysis, analyses their lexical composition, determines intentional and semantic relationship of the generation of the sound signal hm and the physician’s remarks. Two main types of utterances were distinguished: hm as a separate utterance step, as well as hm as part of the phrase including other interjections and content words (in the initial and/or the final and interposition part of the utterance). Context-specific functions were identified for this type of utterances: 1) emotive; 2) establishing and maintaining contact; 3) pause filling; 4) signal; 5) listener activation; 6) imperative; 7) (de)intensification. Recognition of implicit, contextspecific intention of hm-containing utterances facilitates the establishment of emotional and intellectual contact with the patient, and helps the physician to prepare the dialogue partner for the conscious participation in the decision-making process regarding medical treatment.