A Corpus-Based Study Of Repair In Chinese Doctor-Patient Conversations

This dissertation is a systematically descriptive and empirical study applying Conversation Analysis to the study of the organization of repair of 335 extracts in Chinese doctor-patient conversations from the mini-corpus constructed by the author, which is composed of recordings of clinical interviews from Gastrointestinal Medicine, Neurology, Cardio- & Cerebrovascular Medicine, TCM Acupuncture, Surgery and Community Medicine of 5 hospitals at 3 levels in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches are adopted in the systematic study of repairs in Chinese doctor-patient conversations. The major types of analyses and the significant findings resulting from these analyses are as follows:Firstly, on the basis of the frame proposed by Shegloff, Jefferson and Sacks, this dissertation conducts a detailed descriptive study of the repair organization in Chinese doctor-patient conversations. It's found that the preference of repair in Chinese doctor-patient conversations is basically similar to the preference by SJS(1977). However, being a type of institutional discourse and different from ordinary conversation, Chinese doctor-patient conversations display some characteristics in repair organization in many aspects regarding doctor-patient communication context. The findings include: (i)the rate of doctor's self-initiated self-repairs is the highest one; (ii)patient-initiated doctor-repairs outnumber patient's self-initiated self-repairs and are outnumbered by doctor's self-initiated self-repairs; (iii)the rate of patient's self-initiated self-repairs is comparatively low; (iv)the rate of doctor-initiated patient-reairs is the lowest one; (v)patient initiation prefers doctor initiation; (vi)doctor-repairs prefer patient-repairs.Secondly, according to the nature of the trouble sources and the linguistic levels at which repairs occur, the extracts in the data are formally classified into phonetic, lexical and syntactic repairs. Findings suggest that the causes of doctor-patient repair mainly lie in difficulty in lexical understanding while syntactic repairs are fewer and phonetic repairs are the fewest. On the other hand, the trouble sources of the extracts are functionally divided into lexical understanding, speech plan variation, difficulty in lexical access, speech errors, hearing problem and inappropriate collocation. All the trouble sources in doctor-patient conversations are caused semantically, pragmatically, physically or psychologically.Thirdly, a systematic study of initiation strategies and placements has been carried out. Eight strategies have been scaled according to their occurrences: sound stretch > no explicit initiation markers > trouble source repetition >"á"(啊) > word search marker > pause > question >"ńg"(嗯). The strategies of sound stretch and no explicit initiation markers occur most often, indicating the preference of repairing directly in doctor-patient conversations, which is due to the characteristics of doctor-patient conversations, such as the complexity of tasks, pressure of time and communication. The survey shows three kinds of placements, that is, same turn self-initiation, same turn transition place self-initiation and other initiation in the next turn. The research suggests that self-initiation self-repair in same turn is the most preferable positioning for both doctors and patients. Other-initiation self-repair in next turn is ranked in the second place, while other-repair seems to be much lower. Self-initiation in same turn transition place is lowest.Fourthly, based on the existing repair researches, repair strategies in Chinese doctor-patient conversations are classified as substitution, explanation, repetition, reformulation, completion, rejection and insertion, and each is given a detailed analysis. From the point-of-view of being a kind of institutional discourse, this dissertation also explains the features of repair initiation and repair organization, failure of repair, other-repair and repair on-the-fly in Chinese doctor-patient conversations.Fifthly, the organization of repair is the self-righting mechanism for the organization of language use in social interaction. We find that repair can not only be used to deal with the interactional problems of listening, speaking and understanding, it may also serve as a resource for expanding syntactic possibilities, which makes it possible for the speakers to achieve multiple goals before reaching an end. This is the difference between our research and SJS'.