Calidad de la comunicación en el entorno institucional : caso de consultas médicas a través de familiares intérpretes

According to Gumperz (1982: 172-285), daily interaction often gives rise to misunderstandings, frustration, and asynchrony among speakers who share the same language and socio-cultural environment. It follows that in the case of speakers who do not sufficiently share these two conditions, bigger communication problems can be expected. More serious still are the problems that may arise in the case of participants who do not speak a common language and, instead of seeking professional help, resort to non-qualified "interpreters." It is in fact this last kind of interaction that we intend to explore in this paper from a multi-disciplinary perspective: on the one hand, conversational analysis applied to institutional contexts (medical interviews) and, on the other hand, dialogue interpreting. Data come from conversations recorded in healthcare centers between family doctors and immigrant patients in which one of the patient's relatives acts as an "interpreter." The main purpose is to explore the characteristics and communication difficulties that arise in these kind of encounters following the line of recent studies in the mentioned areas.