A Politeness Approach To Euphemism In Doctor-Patient Dialog

As a universal phenomenon, politeness prevails in all cultures and languages. It restricts our words and deeds and regulates our communication activities. Euphemism, an essential embodiment of politeness in people's everyday communication, is a golden means of language. As such, it helps to express our thought indirectly and exists in the language as a form of politeness. For that reason, recent years witnessed an increasing literature on euphemism studies. However, only relatively fewer attempts were made in exploring the role of euphemism used in hospital settings, where misunderstanding occurs from time to time between doctors and patients in our daily lives due to the use of euphemism, and in case their conflicts becomes so obvious and intense that sometimes some hospitals not only dissatisfy the families of the patients but are also charged to be dishonest. The purpose of this study is to explore into the nature of euphemism in doctor-patient interactions. It specifically addresses three issues:1. When treating serious patients, should the doctor tell the patients the truth or conceal it?2. If the use of euphemism implies politeness, how do doctors use euphemism in the doctor-patient dialog to attain the goal of politeness?3. Do doctors speak in the same way, euphemistically to ask different patients?The Hospital of Guilin Medical College was the site from which my data was collected via interviews, and recordings, for analysis, and politeness theories were used to explain the use of euphemism and results of data analysis.Through the analysis of my collected data, findings are presented as follows:Corresponding to the first issue, it was found that doctors will conceal the truth from the patients. The reason why they use this strategy is that they are afraid that the patients can't accept the truth and won't cooperate with the doctor in the treatment. The applying of euphemism to the patients, to some extent, shows politeness to the patients. Sometimes, in order to attain the curative effect they will even violate the Cooperative Principle.In relation to the second issue, it was found that the doctors will usually use general questions and tag questions to inquire the patients'illness instead of telling the patients their real intentions; and they will use questioning instead of replying to reach the politeness. Besides, they will frequently use some omission sentences to attain the effect of euphemism.