Editorial

摘要

This issue of Communication & Medicine includes a wide range of themes, clinical and non-clinical settings, analytical approaches and methodologies. Two key elements stand out inter-connectedly - a commitment to undertaking a patient's perspective and an analytical gaze which regards communicative activities as collaboratively accomplished. Almost all the papers engage microscopically with qualitative data, some more theoretically-informed than others. In what follows I offer brief synopses of the papers by grouping them in a somewhat coherent fashion.Tarja Aaltonen and Minna Laakso, informed by a theoretical framework of intersubjectivity and rela-tionality, look at aphasic interaction involving non-aphasic partners in everyday settings. They focus on the phenomenon of 'halts' - when the conversation is on hold because of the difficulty of finding words. Such interactional halts are subdivided into 'real halts' and 'exam halts' and Aaltonen and Laakso illustrate how such halts have to be balanced in spousal relationships. Identity-work and face-work come to the fore. It seems non-aphasic partners may pursue 'exam halts' - which often translate as non-completion of others' turns - as a way of providing scaffolding.