View source for Yu-Wu2015

{{BibEntry
|BibType=ARTICLE
|Author(s)=Guodong Yu; Yaxin Wu;
|Title=Managing Awkward, Sensitive or Delicate Topics in (Chinese) Radio Medical Consultations
|Tag(s)=EMCA; Medical EMCA; Delicates; Awkwardness; Phone-in; Media; Chinese; 
|Key=Yu-Wu2015
|Year=2015
|Journal=Discourse Processes
|Volume=52
|Number=3
|Pages=201-225
|URL=http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0163853X.2014.954952
|DOI=10.1080/0163853X.2014.954952
|Abstract=Many issues are regarded as delicate in nature, and how to deal with them requires great attention. While a cursory look into verbal interaction reveals such a fact that it is speakers who constitute an issue as awkward, sensitive or delicate by the interactional practices that speakers choose to deal with these issues. Thus all issues or topics could be delicate depending mainly on who the audience is/are, though certain topics are more prone to be understood as sensitive in a culture or subculture. Chinese speakers normally treat talk about sex in public as a delicate issue. The present study, using conversation analysis as the research methodology, probes into the use of "nage" (literally "that") as a practice of managing awkward, sensitive or delicate issue in the radio phone-in medical consultation about sex-related problems. Through sequential manipulation and turn manipulation, the caller uses stand-alone "nage", either as a pronoun referring to a sex organ or sex-related problem or as a filler, to delay or to help to build up to the explicit mentioning of the names of sex organs or sex-related problems. Contrary to the normally observed grammatical fact that pronouns as a referring practice should not appear at the first referring position, "nage" in the present study does occur at the initial referring sequential position as a recognitional. In addition, "nage" also makes a compounded occurrence in the form of 'nage + Noun'. Both in the stand-alone form and the compounded form, "nage" as a delicate issue managing practice in some sense helps the caller to distance himself from the sex-related topics, which are normatively avoided in conversations, and simultaneously helps the caller to portray himself as a victim rather than an agent of the sex-related problems.
}}