Emergency Medical Calls As Rhetorical Discourse

This paper applies insights from both rhetoric and conversation analysis to an examination of emergency medical calls, so as to render salient the communicative intention of persuading in the special rhetorical situation of emergency.To this end, we have collected and analyzed original tapescripts from Fujian Provincial Emergency Dispatch Center, in an effort to identify the characteristics of Chinese people’s use of language under urgent circumstance, as well as the efficiency of responses to the calls from emergency center’s dispatchers. The findings of this project are expected to provide new guidelines for carrying out emergency rescue conversation and thus to improve the communicative efficiency of dispatch center.In the paper, we have an overview about the relative research at home and abroad, and provide a selective introduction of western rhetoric theory, including its definition, social function, rhetorical situation, ethos, pathos and logos. We point out the features of calls for emergency rescue, this special rhetorical situation and its three elements by analyzing the cases of calls. What’s more, we probe into the rhetorical factors influencing the interaction of emergency calls for medical service.