Eleonora Kacl is a PhD candidate in English linguistics at the University of Basel and a member  of the Hermann Paul School of Linguistics. She holds a B.A. of the University of Basel in English and Ancient Civilisations. For her M.A., she studied English (major) at the University of Basel and Digital Linguistics (minor) at the University of Zurich, with a focus on language use in social media, hate speech online as well medical and veterinarian communication. Her MA thesis "'He don’t speak English but he communicates'. Interaction Patterns and Discourse Strategies in Veterinarian-Client-Pet Health Communication" researched televised veterinarian client discourse.

Her research interests include collaborative computer-mediated communication in social media, advice giving, medical communication and veterinarian communication.

This project is supported by the Hermann Paul School of Linguistics and the Janggen-Pöhn-Stiftung.

HPSL Profile

ORCiD

Interactions in healthcare often determine the quality of patient care, effectiveness of medical information relayed and the positivity of patients’ overall healthcare experience. This is amplified when considering non-verbal patients and patients otherwise in need of mediation. As such, it is important to recognize that interactions in healthcare are not limited to human healthcare – rather, they equally pertain to non-human patients’ needs and welfare. Veterinarians are expected to establish expertise, credibility, and trust with both client and pet. Clients juggle multiple roles, acting as laypeople in veterinary matters, but as experts on and interpreters of the pets’ needs. In veterinarian care, these complex communication strategies involve not just the pet owner and the veterinarian but also the pet itself. Discourse in veterinary care consists not only of the veterinarian’s professional assessment and advice, but also of the pet’s state and medical history, which must be accurately interpreted and communicated by the client.

This transdisciplinary dissertation aims to bridge veterinarian communication studies and sociolinguistics in order to analyze participant interaction in veterinarian-client-animal settings during consultations, with a focus on building ‘expert identities’. The project will use relational work analysis, discursive analysis, and previous findings on expertise, credibility, trust, and advice management in medical discourse from human and veterinarian medical research. The data analyzed will be collected through recordings of authentic consultations in small vet clinics, semi-structured interviews, and televised vet documentaries. Aspects on which the research will focus are distribution of discourse, use of relational work, negotiation of roles, advice management, end-of-life communication, conveying the pet’s needs and advocating for appropriate healthcare. This research aims to fill the gap of relational work research in veterinarian linguistics, specifically with a focus on expert identity positioning, management of expert and credibility strategies, creation of trust, and advice management, and will contribute to the field of expert communication in health.

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Miriam Locher (Basel)

Co-Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Stephanie Schnurr (Warwick)