Program

Talking with tinies: Exploring pediatric communication

5 April 2024, Maison de la Recherche, Université de Lille 

Organisers : Bert Cappelle & Ilse Depraetere

(bert.cappelle@univ-lille.fr ilse.depraetere@univ-lille.fr)

How do adults communicate about and with children in healthcare settings? Do doctors and nurses converse mostly with parents during medical encounters, thereby relegating the child to the role of bystander? Or do they develop verbal and non-verbal strategies to help calm anxious children and to give them a central voice? And how do parents help shape the discursive dynamics of this triad?

We will explore these questions by bringing together healthcare practitioners, parents, and linguists, and by unpicking concrete examples of healthcare conversations involving children. The aim of the workshop is to learn from each other’s experiences and perspectives. We are convinced that our ability to respond effectively to the challenges specific to pediatric communication can be improved substantially by linguistic insights into general conversational processes. Conversely, we also want to establish interaction involving children in healthcare contexts as a domain of linguistic investigation.

The presentations and discussion will be in French and in English.

9.30 – 10.00     Welcome

10.00 – 10.30    Bert Cappelle & Ilse Depraetere (Université de Lille, UMR 8163 STL Savoirs Textes Langage)

Contextualization of the workshop [1]

10.30 – 11.00    Vikki Janke (University of Kent) & Stéphanie Caët (Université de Lille, UMR 8163 STL)

The linguistic stepping stones to calming an anxious child patient (summary)

11.00 – 11.30    coffee break

11.30 – 12.00    Ilse Depraetere (Université de Lille, UMR 8163 STL)

Engaging a child during a consultation: a perspective from facework theory (summary)

12.00 – 12.30     Demi Krystallidou (University of Surrey)

"Are you the interpreter, then?’ When a bilingual child patient holds the reins of mediated communication in a language-discordant medical consultation (summary)

12.30 – 14.00    lunch break

14.00 – 14.30     Bénédicte Lombart (Groupe hospitalier Sorbonne Université, LIPHA, Université Gustave Eiffel)

Quand la cécité empathique transitoire des adultes rencontre l’inertie relationnelle de l’enfant (summary)

14.30 – 15.00     Lucy Bray (Edge Hill University)

What questions do children have about their procedure?

15.00 – 15.30    coffee break

15.30 – 16.00     Camilla Rindstedt  (Stockholm University)

Child's weight and nurse-parent interaction at a Child Health Centre: Normality and parent's mindreading (summary)

16.00 – 16.30    Round table and discussion (presenters and Lies Cremers, UZ Leuven)