Zi Yang

Based on video-recordings of 62 traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) encounters, this paper examines the initiation of an essential type of physical examination in TCM using multimodal conversation analysis. Focusing on the interactional patterns for initiating the pulse-taking activity, we observe a sequence made purely of embodied actions, unfolding linearly with a tripartite structure – ‘request for pulse-taking preparation, preparation enactment, and pulse palpation’. Instead of signaling a transition between medical activities as in Western medicine, the initiation of pulse-taking is often made amidst verbal interaction oriented to another medical task, featuring divergent orientations in parallel activities – a distinctive multiactivity type in TCM interaction. Meanwhile, the concurrence of verbal and embodied actions to initiate the pulse-taking activity is found only in three major interactional contingencies, indicating a selective and limited employment of coordinated verbal and nonverbal cues to initiate pulse taking. This study enriches our understanding of both under-researched multimodal interactions in medical contexts and differences in the initiation of physical examination across medical practices. It also has practical implications for improving consultation efficiency.

Drawing on conversation analysis, this paper explores how medical encounters are closed in China’s mainland. Based on a collection of 75 naturally occurring cases, we observe two dominant conversational practices oriented to closing Chinese medical encounters: a stand-alone ‘okay?’ as a generic preclosing initiation, and a gratitude-expressing action as the initiation of the closing sequence. Through a further examination of salient closing patterns in our data, we propose that Chinese doctors prefer fishing for patients’ initiation of the terminal exchange to closing the medical interaction by themselves. The ways of and reasons for eliciting a patient-initiated closure are also discussed. This study may provide a frame of reference for studying medical closures in other cultures and have implications for cross-cultural comparison.

According to conceptual metaphor, this study finds and categorizes three metaphors in perfume commercials: FRAGRANCE IS ATTRACTION, FRAGRANCE IS EMOTION, and FRAGRANCE IS OBJECT. Drawing on the analytical tool of multimodal metaphor analysis, the study further analyzes how perfume commercials complete the metaphorical operation mechanism of mapping from visual and auditory modes to olfactory. It is found that, different from the traditional definition of a concrete source domain and an abstract target domain in conceptual metaphors, the joint participation of multiple modes in commercials may cause a reversal of the degree of abstraction between the source and the target. Due to the limitation of transmitting olfactory information in fragrance commercials where the audience can only receive audible and visual information, “scent” becomes a more abstract concept, while the abstract concepts of “attraction” and “emotion” become a more concrete source. Additionally, the three metaphors’ advertising effects in fragrance commercials are evaluated. Theoretical implications for future studies in multimodal metaphor analysis are also discussed.