OBJECTIVE To examine how parents and professionals engage in a process of negotiation over what labels to use and what developmental meaning to ascribe to those labels when imparting a diagnosis of mental disability to parents of young children. METHOD We performed a sociolinguistic analysis of 10 feedback sessions with parents whose children had been diagnosed by a clinical team as developme...

Background: Differential performance in clinical skills assessments is a widespread phenomenon, for which there remain few explanations. Aim: To better understand the conversational contexts of simulated consultations and how candidates actually behave in these consultations and to determine sociolinguistic factors for highand low-performing candidates. Design & setting: Taking the Membership o...

This paper critically reviews studies that have interpretively invoked communication accommodation theory (CAT) for the study of patient-provider interaction. CAT’s sociolinguistic strategies—approximation, interpretability, interpersonal control, discourse management, and emotional expression—are succinctly introduced and their use in studies of patient-provider interaction discussed. The majo...