JOKING WITH DOCTORS
Playful interaction in illness contexts
The main aim of this paper is to show how joking and wit intervene in the construction of discourse in critical situations such as those represented by illness and pain. Following the work of Mulkay (1988) and Norrick (1993), we have attempted to set the proper conversational contexts to bring about relevant information on the origin and development of humor (or alternatively, the lack of it) when doctors and the whole process of treatment are involved.
The main research questions have been a) the exploration of topics present in doctor-patient witty conversation, and their notional structure; b) the conversational styles used in managing different types of interaction involving illness; c) the images of the body conveyed by the participants, assuming also possible life and death representations. Exploring humor may serve us as a (serious) device to test the thresholds of tolerance in those different domains (topic salience, interaction styles and body representations).
The research has been carried out in different stages: a) interviews with doctors and nurses about patient witticism, b) analysis of a corpus of jokes about doctors and illnesses (and a corresponding exploration on their relative acceptance), c) analysis of patient narratives about their own illness, and d) a survey of modern literature related to the topic. Relevant data are obtained from Catalan-speaking contexts (in interviews, narratives and joke-telling).
According to Mulkay (1988) and Norrick (1993), humor defies agreement and promotes multidimensional approaches to a situation. In our specific crucial contexts, where the meaning of life may be questioned, we have observed how humor (as a substantial part of the construction of discourse) introduces inversion and ambiguity as useful tools. Likewise, humor tries to provide explanations in a domain where obtaining them is rather complicated.
MULKAY, M. (1988): On Humour. Its Nature and Its Place in Modern Society, Polity Press, Cambridge, UK.
NORRICK, N. R. (1993): Conversational Joking, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, USA.