An Adaptation-theoretic Study Of Verbal Impoliteness In Doctor-patient Conflict

Since the politeness theory was proposed in the 1970 s, politeness phenomenon has attracted widespread attention from scholars home and abroad. However, impoliteness which also occurs extensively in the daily communication does draw little attention from scholars. It was not until 1996 when Culpeper first clearly proposed the definition of impoliteness as well as its framework, that the independent research status of impoliteness was established. In recent years, the research achievements concerning impoliteness have been increasing. In terms of different registers, studies on impoliteness include courtroom discourse, family discourse(e.g. husband and wife), literary works, talk show, and so on. Yet rare study has been made on verbal impoliteness in doctor-patient conflict.On the basis of adaptation theory, this thesis aims at investigating the realization means of verbal impoliteness in doctor-patient conflict, how verbal impoliteness in doctor-patient conflict is produced to adapt to the contextual correlates in the physical, social and mental world, as well as the pragmatic functions of verbal impoliteness in doctor-patient conflict. As it is difficult to collect the authentic data, the research materials used in this thesis are selected from three medical TV series, namely The Doctors, Angel Heart and The Distance of Love. Besides, in order to set criteria for data collection, the author puts forward a working definition of verbal impoliteness on the basis of the previous researches. According to the definition, impolite utterances in the conflict between doctor and patient are selected.This thesis adopts the qualitative research method. Through analysis of the research data, some conclusions are made as follows: firstly, the realization means of verbal impoliteness that the medical workers usually adopt in doctor-patient conflict are manifested as direct negation, negative language, irony, rhetorical question, threat, demeaning or derogative expression and swear word. And the realization means of verbal impoliteness that the patients or their families often adopt in doctor-patient conflict are shown as accusation, command, threat, rhetorical question, improper salutation, negative language, and swear word. Secondly, the verbal impoliteness used in doctor-patient conflict is actually the product of adaptation to the medical contextual correlates, which include time, space, physical appearance and “material” conditions in the physical world, social relationships, power and culture in the social world, personality, emotion, cognition and motivation in the mental world. Thirdly, in light of Jakobson’s six major categories of functions of language, the thesis explores three pragmatic functions of verbal impoliteness in doctor-patient conflict, namely: referential function, emotive function and conative function.As for the significance of the research, four points are worthy of attention. Firstly, few studies are conducted on doctor-patient verbal impoliteness from the perspective of pragmatics and thus the present study would to a certain extent enrich the pragmatic research. Secondly, this thesis carries out the study of verbal impoliteness in doctor-patient conflict from the perspective of adaptation theory, which in a way expands the application range of adaptation theory and proves its powerful explanation. Thirdly, since the research materials of the thesis are collected from some medical TV serials, the conclusions about the doctor-patient verbal impoliteness could be beneficial to the creation of medical dramas and the appreciation of medical plays. Finally, the doctor-patient relation in contemporary China is so tense that doctor-patient contradiction has become a hot social problem. Through analysis of the realization means, contextual adaptation and the pragmatic functions of doctor-patient verbal impoliteness, the present study would have a certain sense of enlightenment for the improvement of doctor-patient relationship.