Chapter 7
Negotiation and joint construction of meaning (or why health providers need philosophy of communication)
Meaning is often agreed on through negotiation, whose purpose can be clarification or joint construction of what starts as a ‘fuzzy thought’, or settling on a mutually acceptable way forward in communication and establishing common ground. The paper offers a critical introduction to main approaches to negotiating meaning, focusing on concepts that help explicate it, such as conventions, intentions, and meaning co-construction on one hand, and accountability, perception of authority, and normative expectations on the other. It then moves to the question of negotiating commitments, in particular as applied to Doctor-Patient Talk. It concludes with outlining the advantages of providing doctors with an understanding of dynamic pragmatics, highlighting that negotiating meaning does not inevitably lead to a loss of authority.
Article outline
- 1.Emergent meanings: A preamble
- 2.Problems with “static meaning”: From intentions and conventions to … the unknown
- 2.1Intentions and inferences
- 2.2Focus on convention
- 2.3Speaker meaning or addressee meaning? (or asking a wrong question)
- 2.4Interactively achieved functional proposition
- 3.Interaction and meaning negotiation
- 3.1Co-construction models
- 3.2Negotiation and context parameters
- 3.3Negotiation and defaults
- 4.The question of accountability
- 4.1Negotiating norms and interpersonal standards
- 4.2Accountability, but for what exactly? Commitment, but to what exactly?
- 4.3Negotiating commitments
- 5.Doctor-Patient talk, dynamic meaning, and metadiscursive awareness
- 5.1Negotiation and negotiation of meaning
- 5.2Professional-to-lay and back
- 5.3Parameters again
- 5.4Negotiation, implicit meaning, and emotions
- 5.5Looking forward
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Acknowledgements
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Notes
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References