A Pragmatic Study Of Hedges In Chinese Doctor-Patient Interaction

Doctor-patient interaction abounds with hedges. As an important communicative strategy, hedges are found to be frequently employed by patients and doctors to achieve their communicative goals. Though hedges have displayed great importance in communication, there are few studies on hedges in Chinese medical interaction and no systemic research of the linguistic realization of hedges. Therefore, this study is aimed to explore the linguistic realization and functions of hedges in doctor-patient interaction. Moreover, pragmatic interpretation of hedges from the perspective of relevance theory will be made in this study. The data used in the present study are naturally occurring conversation between patients and doctors collected in Chinese outpatient departments.Analysis of the data collected in medical settings yields the following findings. Firstly, both patients and doctors use the four types of hedges:adaptors, rounders, plausibility shields and attribution shields. Among the four types of hedges, attribution shields are the least frequently used type of hedges by both patients and doctors; approximators used by patients and doctors respectively have higher percentages than shields. Despite the similarities, there are some differences in patients’ and doctors’ use of hedges. For example, the most frequently used type of hedges by patients is adaptors while plausibility shields are the most frequently used type of hedges by doctors. Secondly, the linguistic representation of hedges used by patients is similar to that by doctors. Adaptors used by both patients and doctors mainly take the form of adverbs of degree; three linguistic forms including quantifiers, adverbs of frequency and style disjuncts are found to be used as rounders; plausibility shields are realized by modal verbs and cognition verbs; attribution shields take the form of reporting verbs and linking verbs. Thirdly, hedges are employed by both patients and doctors to increase the precision and objectivity of the utterance, to make the utterance polite, to achieve self-protection, and to ease the tension and avoid potential confrontation. Fourthly, hedges in doctor-patient interaction can be interpreted by the model of ostensive-inferential communication. The procedural information encoded by hedges can constrain patients’ and doctors’ ways to comprehend the utterance and the comprehension of hedges is guided by the principle of relevance.The present study explores hedges in Chinese doctor-patient interaction. From the perspective of academic research, this study extends and enriches previous studies on medical interaction and hedges. Practically speaking, the present study can provide insights into the use and understanding of hedges in doctor-patient interaction. A better understanding of the use of hedges in medical interaction can help patients and doctors to hedge their utterance properly so as to achieve their communicative goals.