Talking emotions in multilingual healthcare settings. A qualitative study of interpreter-mediated interaction in Italian hospitals

This contribution discusses the results of research on the treatment of emotions in interpreted-mediated interactions in healthcare settings, discussing examples of interpreters’ choices excluding or promoting the emotions of the patients in the interaction. The corpus consists of 40 Italian/Arabic interactions and 15 Italian/Chinese interactions. Analysis draws upon Conversation Analysis as well as on studies on Dialogue Interpreting and intercultural communication.
Findings suggest that the activity of interpreters may prevent patients’ emotions from becoming relevant in the medical encounter, but also that interpreting may promote an emotion-sensitive healthcare, in the interest of a patient-centered model of inter-linguistic medicine.