Case study: Analyzing speech acts of a spousal caregiver when responding to a patient with auditory hallucination

Abstract

This is a two-year longitude and qualitative study in Hong Kong, from September 2015 to September 2017, investigating types of speech acts (Austin 1962; Searle 1969, 1976, 1999, 2002) of a spousal caregiver when responding to his wife aged 80 (hereafter referred to as the care-receiver or the patient) with auditory hallucination. The objectives of this study are two-folded: (1) to firstly report a spousal caregiver’s utterances when responding to the patient’s “untrue story” which was medically diagnosed as auditory hallucination, and (2) to further analyze, using Searle’s taxonomy of speech acts, the types of speech acts the caregiver employed in his responses across different points of this study. During this research period, five 30-min semi-structured qualitative interviews with the caregiver were conducted, aiming to collect spoken data of his responses and to elicit his underlying reasons producing those responses. In this study, the analytical framework of spoken discourse is based on initial-response-follow-up (Stubbs 1983) and the taxonomy of speech acts (Searle 1976). The results show that the caregiver employed a mix types of speech acts except the declaratives, and also in a “pattern” with underlying reasons across different points of study, mostly starting from representatives with negation, to directives, expressives, and to commissives. The results also reveal that the caregiver adopted another communicative tactics: silence. He also elaborated his rationale when giving “negation” to the “untrue story - auditory hallucination” told by his wife, arguing this speech act type was not merely about telling the truth. Instead, this can be analyzed from the semantics perspective in terms of language, logic and truth. Admittedly, this study is a single case and this is difficult to estimate its generalizability. However, the above findings can shed some light on understanding speech acts a caregiver would employ when responding to a patient medically diagnosed with auditory hallucination.