On Social Relationship Between Doctor And Patient--A Survey Of Conversations Between Doctor And Patient

At present, social relationship between doctor and patient has drawn attention from all circles. It is universally acknowledged that doctor and patient are in unequal position in medical activity. In doctor-patient relationship, doctor has power over patient and patient is subordinated to doctor.Doctor-patient relationship is established in the process of their communication, therefore, doctor-patient conversation reflects their social relationship directly.This study adopts anonymous observation to investigate the doctor-patient conversations in outpatient department of Zhongnan Hospital. Linguistic material is obtained through tape-recording on the spot. The study focuses on the linguistic issues of conversation duration, address term, directive and medical jargon. After quantitative analysis and case study, we find the following problems.? Conversation duration is of a short time, such as 3.03 min in attending doctor OPD and 4.58 min in chief doctor OPD.? Speeches adopted by doctors and by patients are different, doctor always adopts direct and commanding speech and patient always adopts polite and indirect speech.? Medical jargons obstruct effective communication between doctor and patient.Next, the social factors, which influence doctor-patient conversations, are analyzed in the perspective of sociolinguistics, and the conclusion that doctor and patient are unequal in social hierarchy is thus obtained.Finally, this study reflects on the problems of doctor-patient relationship and doctor-patient speech interaction. At the same time, it points out that thelanguage of medicine is a promising field, more studies are needed to combine what we have learned in sociolinguistics with the knowledge and experience of people in medical profession, with perspicacious results.