A Pragmatic Study On Doctors’ Identity Construction In The Traditional Chinese Medicine Clinic And In The Modern Western Medicine Clinic

Identity used to be a research focus in sociology,psychology and other social science studies,according to which identity is deemed as a fixed property.Research on identity from traditional social perspectives observes basic social factors of individuals such as age,gender,nationality and etc.Social constructivism has changed traditional idea of treating identity as an unchangeable social factor by pointing out that identity and its construction is dynamic in nature.Based on the idea of social constructivism,a consensus has been reached among pragmatic researchers that identity and its construction should have been seen as a kind of pragmatic resource,which is context-specific and dynamic.As more and more studies on identity and its construction are carried out from a pragmatic perspective,the idea of pragmatic identity has been brought up.Pragmatic identity refers to the online identity that is constructed by the interlocutor with an aim to make his/her online communicative need satisfied.Meanwhile,the dynamic process of constructing an online identity is seen as pragmatic identity construction.Nowadays,China is undertaking its national medical reform while conflict between doctors and patients is getting more and more intense.With such a social background,it is of great necessity to investigate doctor-patient conversations in China.However,it is worth noting that even with such a huge medical environment shared in common,differences in doctor-patient conversations still exist between traditional Chinese medicine clinics and modern Western medicine clinics.Based on the Linguistic Adaptation Theory proposed by Verschueren(1999),this research intends to answer the following three questions:(1)What identities do doctors from the traditional Chinese medicine clinic and the modern Western medicine clinic construct in doctor-patient talks?(2)How does identity construction of doctors from the modern Western medicine clinic and from the traditional Chinese medicine clinic adapt to different contexts?(3)What communicative strategies do doctors from the two different clinics apply in their identity construction?This research is a qualitative one on the basis of analyzing 61 clinic interviews recorded in the traditional Chinese medicine clinic and in the modern Western medicine clinic with the aid of a digital recording pen,an IPhone and the recorded linguistic materials were later transcribed and notated for pragmatic analysis.The research yields three major findings as follows:Firstly,doctors from the traditional Chinese medicine clinic basically construct three identities,namely the authority/expert identity,the companion identity and the mentor identity.Similarly,doctors from the modern Western medicine clinic chiefly construct three identities,which are the identity as an authority/expert,the identity as a companion and the identity as a listener.Secondly,in discussing the working mechanism of doctors’ identity construction,both similarities and differences are found in this research.In adaptation to the physical world,identity construction of doctors from the traditional Chinese medicine clinic and from the modern Western medicine clinic share the same features.In adaptation to the social world,difference lies in the fact that identity construction by doctors from the traditional Chinese medicine clinic obviously adapt to traditional Chinese cultural norms.In adaptation to the mental world,identity construction of doctors from the two different clinics similarly adapt to patients’ positive/negative affects and positive/negative face.Thirdly,difference exists in strategies used by doctors for their identity construction.Different from doctors from the modern Western medicine clinic,doctors from the traditional Chinese medicine clinic would adopt a strategy to weaken the use of the identity as an authority/expert,which helps shorten psychological distance between doctors and patients.Moreover,doctors from the traditional Chinese medicine clinic tend to implicitly construct their identity as a mentor by expressing Chinese philosophical ideas and offering comfort to patients.This research testifies the strong explanatory power of the linguistic adaptation theory,but it is inevitably subjective to some degree as a qualitative study.This research presents a general investigation into doctors’ identity construction in both traditional Chinese medicine clinic and modern Western medicine clinic,with a hope that it will shed some light on strategies applied by doctors to construct their online identities and make relevant linguistic choices to make their communicative needs satisfied.It is also hoped that this research will make certain contribution to creating a harmonious doctor-patient relationship in China.