A Pragmatic Study Of Doctor-patient Interaction From The Perspective Of Politeness

Politeness, as a universal phenomenon, can be observed in all languages and cultures, therefore politeness principle, which is regarded as an important principle guiding human interaction, has drawn much attention from scholars and researchers. Both in the West and in China, many studies of politeness in general have been made on ordinary interaction but few of them are associated with institutional interaction. Doctor-patient interaction is also an important institutional interaction and closely related to our daily life, thus this paper concentrates on politeness in doctor-patient interaction.This paper targets at oral interaction among doctors and patients. Based on the doctor-patient interactions in a natural setting, within the framework of pragmatic politeness theory, this paper aims to examine the politeness phenomena in doctor-patient interaction, or more specifically, and it is to analyze the violation and compliance of some politeness principles on both parts of the doctor and patient as well as the current doctor-patient relationship reflected in the politeness phenomena.This paper uses the face-want theory proposed by Brown & Levinson as the theoretical framework, distinguishes positive face and negative face, and analyze the impolite phenomena on both parts of the doctor and patient. A careful analysis of the collected linguistic data of doctor-patient interaction reveals that:1. Owing to the goal-oriented feature of doctor-patient interaction, both participants do not care very much about politeness but pay much attention to the solution of the medical problem.2. Comparatively speaking, patients are more aware of politeness, showing great respect and obedience to doctors while doctors are more businesslike in interactions.3. The general features of politeness in doctor-patient interaction reveal the imbalance of doctors and patients in medical information, institutional power and interpersonal relationship.Based on the politeness features in doctor-patient interaction and the current doctor-patient relationship reflected in it, this paper tries and proposes some politeness strategies, which are expected to be helpful for doctor-patient interaction and will promote a more harmonious communication between doctors and patients.