Sympathising with patients in historical China: an interaction ritual approach

Abstract

In this study, we examine how family members expressed sympathy when visiting patients in mid-eighteenth-century China, by studying a corpus of patient visits drawn from the renowned Chinese novel Hongloumeng 红楼梦 (Dream of the Red Chamber). The study of such visits is methodologically challenging because these visits were less scripted than many other ritual interactions, operating with many seemingly ad hoc elements. We approach patient visits in our data as interaction rituals which – similar to any ritual – operate with a frame and a related cluster of conventionalized patterns of language use. We argue that the pragmatic dynamics of many interactional ritual phenomena such as patient visits can be reliably captured by bringing together ritual, speech acts and interaction.