“Só te perguntá”: análise da sequencialidade interacional das ações de pedido de informação e de pedido de confirmação em perguntas polares

Abstract

This master’s dissertation consists of a subproject of a larger study, entitled “Uma mulher, um feto, e uma má notícia: a entrega de diagnósticos de síndromes e de malformações fetais – em busca de uma melhor compreensão do que está por vir e do que pode ser feito”. (OSTERMANN, 2013). It investigates questions in Brazilian Portuguese through a conversation analytical perspective (SACKS; SCHEGLOFF; JEFFERSON, 1974) and an interaction linguistics approach. (OCHS; SCHEGLOFF; THOMPSON, 1996; SELTING; COUPER-KUHLEN, 2001). Taking into consideration that the objective of this dissertation is to distinguish the actions of requesting for information and requesting for confirmation in polar questions in Brazilian Portuguese, 891 polar questions were analyzed during the anamnesis phase in 17 first-time genetic counseling consultations. All of these consultations audiorecorded were held at a public health system hospital specialized in moderate and high-risk pregnancy, located in southern Brazil. The results indicate that, in this context, the actions of asking for information and asking for confirmation differ by the doctor’s epistemic degree concerning the information being requested. It was noticed that such previous knowledge might be originated from different sources, which are: (a) the interaction itself, (b) medical knowledge, (c) information gained through the fetal medicine group and/or (d) information from medical records. Regarding the interactional resources that differentiate these two actions, we identified that discourse markers were only used in requests for confirmation. On what concerns their prosodic features, in order to describe the F0 curve of these polar questions, the analysis was done in two stages. Firstly, we conducted an auditory analysis of all the 891 polar questions and, then, by using the software PRAAT, we conducted the acoustic analysis in 300 of these polar questions. Confirming the intonation patterns of polar questions described in Brazilian Portuguese descriptive grammar (CASTILHO, 2014; PERINI, 2005), we also identified that polar questions may present rising intonation. However, our data also reveal that polar questions may present falling and flat intonation. In the set of analyzed polar questions, we observed that some demonstrated the doctor’s orientation to delicate topics and this subset was also submitted to analysis. We identified that only specific topics were interactionally constructed as delicate by the geneticist. We also observed that in the turns designed with the expression “did you happen to”, in requests of information about folic acid and nuchal translucency, the doctor removes the responsibility from the pregnant. On the other hand, in the sequences in which the doctor requests information about smoking, drinking and using drugs, by the offering closings with positive assessments and accounts, the doctor attributes the responsibility to the pregnant women.