Communication accommodation theory: Past accomplishments, current trends, and future prospects

Language Sciences · 2023 · 108 citations

• Sociology
• Social Science
• Computer Science

Healthcare Professionals’ Emotional Labor and Management of Workplace Violence with Underserved Patients in the Safety Net Context

Health Communication · 2023 · 5 citations

• Medicine
• Nursing
• Psychology

Healthcare providers (HP) work in high-stress situations, interacting with patients and families who are often in crisis. HPs who work in safety net clinics, which provide care to uninsured, Medicaid recipients and other vulnerable populations, interact with patients who are frequently frustrated by long wait times, extensive paperwork, short appointments, and have generally lower health literacy. Many patients have chronic conditions and substance use disorders which has been associated with higher likelihood to be perceived as verbally aggressive and/or perpetrate workplace violence (WPV). Using interviews with 26 HPs at safety net clinics, we investigated how HPs manage interactions with aggressive patients and avoid burnout. Findings are based on emotional labor constructs describing why and how workers use emotion management strategies to smooth communication and relationships with clients/patients. According to our participants, HPs perform emotional labor to de-escalate interactions, prevent WPV, and to develop relationships with patients who might become regular clinic patients. We found that HPs perceive an influence of the clinic context on patient aggression management, hold initial perceptions that shape engagement with aggressive patients, and report emotional labor and burnout that came from interacting with aggressive patients to prevent WPV. We offer implications that extend research on emotional labor and burnout, provide guidance to healthcare organizations, and offer directions for future theory and research.

Overcoming Ungrievability: Transgender Expectations for Identity after Death

Sociological Inquiry · 2020 · 15 citations

• Sociology
• Sociology
• Gender studies

Butler ( Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence . London, UK: Versa; 2004) observed cultural shifts immediately after 9/11 and suggested that, with regard to grievable and ungrievable lives, societal power structures “produce and maintain certain exclusionary conceptions of who is normatively human” (p. xiv–xv). The current study brings new understanding to the concept of grievability by exploring the symbolically violent de‐transitioning of trans people after their deaths. The aim of this exploratory study was to examine the thoughts and attitudes of older trans people (40 y. o. plus) with regard to the phenomenon of nonconsensual de‐transitioning after death and the expectations they have regarding the expression of their own identity after death. The wishes of the participants were grouped into four outcome categories: hoping to be memorialized only as their lived identity (25%); only as their identity‐assigned‐at‐birth (6%); as both identities combined (44%); and those who claimed that they did not care how their identity was memorialized (25%). Our findings serve to emphasize the importance of open and honest end‐of‐life communication as well as to underscore the diverse nature of the transgender population and the complexity of the transgender identity.

Intergenerational Communication across the Pacific Rim: The Impact of Filial Piety

Routledge eBooks · 2020 · 35 citations

• Sociology
• Sociology
• History

Most research and theory in communication and ageing is derived from North America. This investigation is one of a series of comparative attempts to redress this imbalance by studying intergenerational communication patterns in Southeast and East Asian cultures as well as the West. In this study, we focused on filial piety, and administered our own initial measure of normative beliefs about it to over 1400 students in four Western (United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand) and four East and Southeast Asian (Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and The Philippines) sites. Three-mode factor analyses indicated that overall, participants in the study distinguished between younger and older people and family members and people outside the family in their judgements of filial piety. In addition, subjects’ responses fell into dimensions of practical support versus communication, and respect versus contact and support. Results also indicated differences between what young people should give to their elderly parents (practical support), what parents expect (continued contact with their children) and what older adults in general expect (respect). Students from Asian cultures showed a sharper distinction than did Western students between what they intended to provide (practical support) and what they perceived their parents and older adults to expect (continued contact and respect), although this difference was not great. Finally, MANOVAs indicated that Asian students felt more obliged to give practical support than did Westerners, while the latter put more emphasis on continued communication and contact with older adults. Interestingly, Asian participants reported that their intentions to care for and communicatively support older people were lower than that expected of them, whereas Western participants claimed that they personally would provide more support of all types than was expected of them.