Moving Towards (and Away From) Possible Discussions About Dying

Abstract

The article examines a corpus of palliative care interactions recorded in a large UK hospice. It focuses on a collection of patient possible allusions to disease progression and end of life and examines their companions’ (i.e., accompanying family members and friends) subsequent actions. These actions implement various interactional projects that are coherent with the sequence of actions and broader activity underway. They share the outcome that they steer the interaction away from the possibility of immediately elaborating on the patient’s allusion, and of making matters related to disease progression or end of life explicit (despite these being relevant possibilities).

Keywords

• companions
• conversation analysis
• end of life care
• hospice
• palliative care