ABSTRACT
This paper explores the fine-grained interactional minutiae involved in promoting health literacy in medical interactions. More specifically, it explores the multimodal interactional resources (verbal and nonverbal) that health professionals and lay participants mobilize in order to make sense of fetal ultrasound images. We adopt the ethnomethodological perspective of Multimodal Conversation Analysis (SACKS; SCHEGLOFF; JEFFERSON, 1974SACKS, H.; SCHEGLOFF, E.; JEFFERSON, G. (1974). A simplest systematic of turn-taking. Language, 50, pp. 696-735.; GOODWIN, 1981GOODWIN, C. (1981). Conversational organization: interaction between speakers and hearers. New York: Academic Press. ; 2010GOODWIN, C. (2010). Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 32, pp. 1489-1522.; MONDADA, 2018MONDADA, L. (2018). Multiple Temporalities of Language and Body in Interaction: Challenges for Transcribing Multimodality. Research on Language and Social Interaction, v. 51, n. 1, p. 85-106.) to investigate 10 audio and video interactions that were recorded during fetal ultrasound exams that took place at a moderate and high-risk pregnancy ward in a public hospital in Brazil. Our aim is to ‘make visible’ the multimodal ethnomethods that interactants employ in order to render ultrasound images intelligible ‘texts’. Among the various semiotic resources mobilized to achieve intersubjectivity in this complex setting, special focus is given to the healthcare professionals’ use of similes, and the fundamental importance of the temporality in which verbal and nonverbal resources are mobilized in the process of making images intelligible. In that sense, we hope to bring to this special thematic issue the methodological advantages that a Multimodal Conversation Analytic perspective can afford to the discussion about multiliteracies and, in practical terms, to the advancement of health literacy. In medical contexts, health literacy can (and perhaps should!) be a concern ‘at all points.’ There might be no ‘borders’ to what constitutes a health literacy source or resource. Our claims, thus, are the following: (i) ultrasound images do constitute materials to be ‘read’ and understood - also by lay participants; (ii) healthcare professionals can (and perhaps should) promote health literacy among patients by employing efforts to make images ‘readable’; and, finally, (iii) social interaction is one of the constitutive loci for the promotion of multiliteracy events.
Keywords:
health literacy; multiliteracies; social interaction
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