In recent years, the opioid crisis in the United States has sparked significant discussion on doctor–patient interactions concerning chronic pain treatments, but little to no attention has been given to investigating the vocal aspects of patient talk. This exploratory sociolinguistic study intends to fill this knowledge gap by employing prosodic discourse analysis to examine context-specific linguistic features used by the interlocutors of two distinct medical interactions. We found that patients employed both low pitch and creak as linguistic resources when describing chronic pain, narrating symptoms and requesting opioids. The situational use of both features informs us about the linguistic ways in which patients frame fraught issues like chronic pain in light of the current opioid crisis. This study expands the breadth of phonetic analysis within the domain of discourse analysis, serving to illuminate discussions surrounding the illocutionary role of the lower vocal tract in expressing emotions.

中文翻译：

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让我们谈谈疼痛和阿片类药物：医疗咨询中的低沉和吱吱声

近年来，美国的阿片类药物危机引发了关于慢性疼痛治疗的医患互动的重要讨论，但很少或根本没有关注调查患者谈话的声音方面。这项探索性社会语言学研究旨在通过使用韵律话语分析来检查两种不同医学互动的对话者使用的特定于上下文的语言特征来填补这一知识空白。我们发现，患者在描述慢性疼痛、叙述症状和要求使用阿片类药物时，会将低音调和吱吱声作为语言资源。根据当前的阿片类药物危机，这两种功能的情境使用让我们了解患者如何构建诸如慢性疼痛等令人担忧的问题的语言方式。