Requesting immediate action in the surgical operating room
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Lorenza Mondada
Abstract
Research on requests has focused mainly on requests in ordinary social interactions, often over the telephone, including ‘remote’ requests for something to be done in the future. However, less is known about requests in face-to-face interactions, concerning immediate not-postponable or time critical actions to be done here and now, about their embodied production, and their embeddedness in the current activity. In this Chapter I examine requests for something to be done immediately which are formatted through multimodal resources – through grammar, gestures and the embodied engagement in the ongoing activity – and which orient to the local timing of the activity and the situated environment making the request accountable. I focus on video recordings of surgical procedures: the operating room is a perspicuous setting for investigating ‘immediate’ requests, since much of the teamwork supporting a surgical operation is conducted through requests addressed by the chief surgeon to his collaborators. I describe the possible multimodal formats of these requests – that can be accomplished verbally, with or without gesture, or with gesture alone – and the way they are silently responded to. Furthermore I show how they are built into expanded complex sequences, in which the preparation of the request, projecting its relevance and recognizability, is crucial. By describing in detail the contingency, temporality, embodiment of these requests in the operating room, the paper offers more generally a systematic account of the organization of requests to be done right now and their embodiment and embeddedness in the current activity.
Abstract
Research on requests has focused mainly on requests in ordinary social interactions, often over the telephone, including ‘remote’ requests for something to be done in the future. However, less is known about requests in face-to-face interactions, concerning immediate not-postponable or time critical actions to be done here and now, about their embodied production, and their embeddedness in the current activity. In this Chapter I examine requests for something to be done immediately which are formatted through multimodal resources – through grammar, gestures and the embodied engagement in the ongoing activity – and which orient to the local timing of the activity and the situated environment making the request accountable. I focus on video recordings of surgical procedures: the operating room is a perspicuous setting for investigating ‘immediate’ requests, since much of the teamwork supporting a surgical operation is conducted through requests addressed by the chief surgeon to his collaborators. I describe the possible multimodal formats of these requests – that can be accomplished verbally, with or without gesture, or with gesture alone – and the way they are silently responded to. Furthermore I show how they are built into expanded complex sequences, in which the preparation of the request, projecting its relevance and recognizability, is crucial. By describing in detail the contingency, temporality, embodiment of these requests in the operating room, the paper offers more generally a systematic account of the organization of requests to be done right now and their embodiment and embeddedness in the current activity.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgement vii
- Glossary of transcription conventions ix
- Requesting – from speech act to recruitment 1
- Human agency and the infrastructure for requests 35
- Benefactors and beneficiaries 55
- The putative preference for offers over requests 87
- On divisions of labor in request and offer environments 115
- The social and moral work of modal constructions in granting remote requests 145
- Two request forms of four year olds 171
- Orchestrating directive trajectories in communicative projects in family interaction 185
- How to do things with requests 215
- On the grammatical form of requests at the convenience store 243
- Requesting immediate action in the surgical operating room 269
- When do people not use language to make requests? 303
- “Requests” and “offers” in orangutans and human infants 335
- Subject Index 365
- Name Index 369
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgement vii
- Glossary of transcription conventions ix
- Requesting – from speech act to recruitment 1
- Human agency and the infrastructure for requests 35
- Benefactors and beneficiaries 55
- The putative preference for offers over requests 87
- On divisions of labor in request and offer environments 115
- The social and moral work of modal constructions in granting remote requests 145
- Two request forms of four year olds 171
- Orchestrating directive trajectories in communicative projects in family interaction 185
- How to do things with requests 215
- On the grammatical form of requests at the convenience store 243
- Requesting immediate action in the surgical operating room 269
- When do people not use language to make requests? 303
- “Requests” and “offers” in orangutans and human infants 335
- Subject Index 365
- Name Index 369
