Response expansion as a practice for raising a concern during regular prenatal checkups

Abstract

The present study addresses the issue of how pregnant women raise possible concerns in regular prenatal checkups. Within this context, the reason for the visit is not a particular problem which a pregnant woman has and would be supposed to reveal during the visit. Rather, the reason for the visit is transparent from the outset, that is, to have a prenatal checkup. However, pregnant women may have various problems that they wish to discuss with the healthcare provider. Indeed, there are various practices which pregnant women can employ to present their possible problems. In this study, I focus on a set of such practices: pregnant women expanding their responses to healthcare providers' routine questions to take initiative in presenting problems. Drawing on a corpus of 42 video-recorded regular prenatal checkups in Japan, I will elucidate structural features of the practices and their consequences.