ABSTRACT

This article 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 (ID) 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 British English.

摘要

本文研究了“想象的构想”：说话者向一个不存在的他人的内部世界发出声音。借助9个小时的医护人员在“发现意识”会议期间讨论智障患者（ID）的视频录像，我们探索了该人员介绍患者想法的可能版本的时间。他们使用这些版本来对待患者的内心世界，通常将其作为描述客观可观察到的现象和对其含义进行主观解释之间的桥梁。它还在第一位的职位描述和第二位的职位上的竞争资源中，提出了员工对患者的想法的立场。研究结果表明，从第一人称视角介绍患者的想法可能是在这种情况下采取各种复杂的认知和移情行为的通用方法。数据使用英式英语。