Repetitions In Medical Discourse

Scholars have studied repetition from various perspectives. However, few have paid attention to the influence of repetition on social relationship among interlocutors from the point of discourse comprehension and processing. As the social relationship between doctors and patients has long been a social concern and their communication involves psychological factors, this paper tries to investigate repetitions used by doctors and patients in medical discourse from discourse comprehension and processing. With the transcribed data of some25-hour taped conversations between doctors and patients collected at three Category-A hospitals, the author adopts both qualitative and quantitative methods to describe and analyze the forms and functions of repetitions within the framework of conversation analysis and critical discourse analysis. The differences between the two parties in repetition are further examined and interpreted from the view of discourse comprehension and processing so as to understand their cognitive processes and schemas as well as their influence on the construction of their social relationship.First, for a descriptive analysis of repetitions, this paper categorizes repetitions in medical discourse in terms of rhetorical acts and structure. As for rhetorical acts, doctors use all the eleven rhetorical acts while patients focus on one only, namely, SYMPTOMS. As for structural repetitions, doctors are more likely to employ full repetitions and continuous repetitions, while patients, augmented repetitions and discontinuous repetitions. Functionally, doctors use repetitions for the purpose of seeking agreement, making confirmation, and inviting elaboration, whilst patients use them for attracting doctors’attention to their intended foci, inviting doctors’elaboration, seeking doctors’ assurance and making contrasts to evaluate doctors’previous treatment.Second, this paper represents disparities between these two parties in discourse comprehension and processing from local coherence and global coherence. In local coherence, doctors employ full repetitions and continuous repetitions indicating their adoption of direct matching and given/new strategy, a parallel processing and a non-circular processing within a topic or a phase while patients use augmented repetitions and discontinuous repetitions implying their serial and circular processing. In global coherence, doctors employ a top-down processing whilst patients, a bottom-up processing.At last, doctors and patients’differences in discourse comprehension and processing are responsible for the two parties’diverse expectations towards their social relationships (paternalism and consumerism), triggering their communication obstacles. If patients do not cooperate with doctors’top-down processing and deductive presentation or doctors do not consider patients’bottom-up processing and inductive presentation, their communication is bound to be inhibited.Focusing on repetitions in medical discourse, this paper tries to analyze differences between doctors and patients in discourse comprehension and processing, which influences the construction of their social relationship. With the analysis of repetitions in medical discourse from the three levels:discourse, cognition and society, this paper helps not only deepen our understanding to repetition itself but also tentatively investigates psychological factors of interlocutors instead of directly linking discourse to society, throwing light on new understanding regarding the social relationship between doctors and patients.