Grounding the meaning – negotiation of semantic features in conversation
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This paper investigates the interactional process by which a physician and a patient collaboratively coin a novel compound to represent the patient’s individual symptomatology. Drawing on the framework of Conceptual Semantics, the analysis traces how the emergent compound is constructed turn by turn, as each conversational contribution incrementally adds specific semantic features. The resulting lexical item conforms to conventional word-formation templates, while simultaneously generating a situated, creative meaning that reflects the participants’ shared understanding of the medical problem. By integrating fine-grained analysis of conversational data with semantic feature decomposition, the study illustrates how word-formation can function as a collaborative achievement in dialogue. Rather than aiming at general claims, the paper provides an exemplary case study that demonstrates, in situ, how compounding may be used to negotiate and express subjective experiences in clinical interaction.
Source: Cahiers de praxématique
DOI: 10.4000/15b3w
Author: Anna Kutscher
Institution: Bielefeld University
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4417157085