Ekberg, Katie;
Ekberg, Stuart;
Weinglass, Lara;
Herbert, Anthony;
Rendle-Short, Johanna;
Bluebond-Langner, Myra;
Yates, Patsy;
... Danby, Susan; + view all
(2022)
Attending to child agency in paediatric palliative care consultations: Adults' use of tag questions directed to the child.
Sociology of Health & Illness
, 44
(3)
pp. 566-585.
10.1111/1467-9566.13437.
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Abstract
Children's agency in their own lives is increasingly recognised as important, including within paediatric health care. The issue of acknowledging child agency is complex in the context of paediatric palliative care, where children have serious and complex conditions that often impact their ability to verbally communicate with others. This study explores how clinicians and parents/guardians direct talk towards a child patient when they are present in a consultation. Conversation analysis methods were used to examine 74 video-recorded paediatric palliative care consultations. Detailed turn-by-turn examination of the recorded consultations identified the recurrent use of a practice described by linguists as a ‘tag question’, which follows some statement (e.g. ‘he loves that, don't ya’). Both clinicians and parents/guardians often directed these tag questions towards the child patient. Analysis demonstrated how these tag questions: (1) validated the child's epistemic authority over what was being said and (2) made a child's response a possible, but not necessary, next action. The findings are discussed in relation to the sociology of child agency and how this agency is acknowledged and displayed within and through social interaction. This research provides direct evidence of children's competence as informants about their own symptoms.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Attending to child agency in paediatric palliative care consultations: Adults' use of tag questions directed to the child |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1111/1467-9566.13437 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.13437 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2022 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for SHIL (SHIL). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | child agency, conversation analysis, paediatric palliative care, tag questions |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health > Population, Policy and Practice Dept UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10145862 |
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