Imagined constructed thought: how staff interpret the behaviour of patients with intellectual disabilities

Webb, Joseph C.; Pilnick, Alison; Clegg, Jennifer

Abstract

This paper examines ‘imagined constructed thought’: speakers giving voice to the inner world of a non-present other. Drawing on 9 hours of video footage of health-care staff discussing patients with intellectual disabilities during Discovery Awareness sessions, we explored times when the staff presented a possible version of a patient's thoughts. They used those versions to take a stance on the patient’s inner world, often as a bridge between description of objectively observable phenomena and subjective interpretation of its meaning. It also projected staff's own stance on what the patient was thinking, both in first-position descriptions, and as a competitive resource in those given in second position. The findings suggest that presenting the patients' thoughts from a first-person perspective can be a versatile way of enacting a variety of complex epistemic and empathic actions in this setting. Data are in English.

Citation

Webb, J. C., Pilnick, A., & Clegg, J. (2018). Imagined constructed thought: how staff interpret the behaviour of patients with intellectual disabilities. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 51(4), 347-362. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2018.1523893

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 19, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Nov 15, 2018
• Publication Date: Nov 15, 2018
• Deposit Date: Mar 27, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: May 16, 2020
• Journal: Research on Language and Social Interaction
• Print ISSN: 0835-1813
• Electronic ISSN: 1532-7973
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 51
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 347-362
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2018.1523893
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/920938
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08351813.2018.1523893
• Additional Information: his is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Research on Language and Social Interaction on [date of publication], available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/08351813.2018.1523893