Institute of Data Science, Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands.
Omega (Westport). 2023 Feb;86(3):1089-1107. doi: 10.1177/00302228211000938. Epub 2021 Mar 15.
Patterns of linguistic and interactional behavior by people at the very end of their lives are not well described, partly because data is difficult to obtain. This paper analyzes descriptions of 486 deaths gathered from 1900 to 1904 in the first-ever clinical study of dying by noted Canadian physician, Sir William Osler. Only 16 patients were noted speaking, and only four canonical last words were reported. The most frequent observation by medical staff was that the deaths were quiet ( = 30), though range of other behaviors were noted (e.g., moaning, delirium, seeming intention to speak). Osler's problematic study left behind data whose analysis is a small step toward empirically characterizing the linguistic and interactional details of a previously under-described phenomena as well as the importance of the social context in which they occur.
生命末期人群的语言和互动行为模式尚未得到很好的描述，部分原因是数据难以获取。本文分析了加拿大著名医生威廉·奥斯勒爵士在首次对临终患者进行临床研究时收集的 1900 年至 1904 年间的 486 例死亡描述。只有 16 名患者被记录在案，只有四个被报道为典型的临终遗言。医务人员最常观察到的是死亡时很安静（ = 30），尽管也注意到了其他行为（如呻吟、神志不清、似乎有说话的意图）。奥斯勒这项有问题的研究留下的数据，其分析是朝着实证描述以前描述不足的语言和互动细节迈出的一小步，也是发生这些现象的社会背景的重要性的一小步。
