-
Humanities
- Discourse analysis
- Pragmatics
- Sociolinguistics
-
Medical and health sciences
- Health and community services
- Health counselling
Responding to a number of urgent problems noted in the area of
Covid-19 contact tracing (reluctance to give information, lack of care
orientation, script-dominated talk), this project analyses and seeks to
optimize the interactional functioning of the contact tracing phone call
services coordinated by the Flemish Agency for Health & Care. It
combines 4 objectives: (i) diagnosis of interactional practice in 3
cycles of data collection and analysis (incl. 1 cycle on encounters in
other languages than Dutch); (ii) recommendations for practice, the
development of training materials and a recruitment package; (iii) a
pilot implementation followed by an efficacy measurement; and (iv)
societal impact on the general public’s support for contact tracing.
The project inserts itself in an applied, interactional sociolinguistic
and conversation analytic research tradition on medical encounters
and institutional interviewing on sensitive topics. It addresses a
current gap in (i) fundamental knowledge about the linguistic
interactional dynamics of contact tracing calls as a specific type of
institutional encounter and (ii) applied knowledge on how to improve
task-oriented efficiency and enhance pragmatic awareness of
practitioners as a dimension of professional reflexivity in a currently,
important domain of combatting and containing the Covid-19
pandemic. The project benefits from close collaboration between
relevant linguistic, medical and ethical expertise.