The words we die by

Abstract

Hospice is a venue organized to provide a "good death" for patients and family. Since many hospice patients are bedridden and often incoherent or unconscious, many of this venue's interactions take place between hospice professionals and patients' families. The families of patients desire definitive prognoses because knowing what to expect can help them decide how to act, but for professionals such knowledge is characterized by doubt. In light of their needs, how then do hospice professionals use language to achieve and maintain the family's buy-in? Drawing on eight months of observation in Hospice House Interdisciplinary Team (IDT) meetings, we analyze the verbal interactions between hospice professionals and patients' families, focusing in particular on registers of prognosis, to better understand how hospice professionals use language to manage family expectations. In order to accomplish this goal central to their occupational project, hospice professionals use future grammars, primarily comprising predictive and subjunctive verbs. Imperative verbs are rarely used. We refine the enactive perspective on authoritativeness by identifying some linguistic components that mediate authority's efficacy in a venue where emotion management is central to professional work. Paying attention to the uses of these linguistic registers helps us further understand some everyday ways that death is organized, and in general, may offer a richer understanding of death itself.

Keywords: Death; Hospice; Language; Professionals; Prognosis.