A Study On Interruption, Negation And Repetition In Doctor-Patient Verbal Interaction From The Perspective Of Politeness

Research on medical discourse has drawn great interest in the domain of discourse analysis abroad since the 1970s and has aroused a wide interest in China since 1990s. By investigation into medical discourse, our knowledge in the medical enterprise is enriched and our understanding of language activities is deepened. This study aims at a investigation into interruptions, negations and repetitions in the doctor-patient interaction from the perspective of politeness in Watt’s social approach. The instances of these speech acts will be further classified according to the structure and functions they served.Traditional categorical, static perspective of politeness can not explain or illustrate the speech acts in the real context. It is found in this study that the doctor and patient show systematic differences in applying to negation, interruption and repetition in terms of frequency, form and purpose. These varieties demonstrate the complex process of the negotiation on how the goal-driven patient and doctor should address each other’s face and remain polite the specific circumstance. Further more, the paper also reveals that at different stages of the patient-doctor interaction, the negotiation generally lead to different understanding of how each party can be polite and reserve the other interactant’s face. On the whole, in the negotiation between the doctor and patient, the patient are often positioned to be dominated by the doctor in their interaction for a more efficient diagnose in that the doctor is regarded as professional in medicine and experienced in how the diagnose should be functional organized. Nevertheless, in the negotiation at the stage of condition description, the negotiation would not be as smooth as it is in other stages as, on the one hand, the patient is eager to give as full a description of his condition and on the other hand, the doctor would take the patient’s contribution as lengthy. In this case, speech acts may be politic in the speaker’s mind while in the hearer’s mind im (?)lite and face-threatening.By applying to Watts’social approach to the politeness analysis of various forms and functions that negation, repeat and interruption are realized and designed to serve, this paper counts as the first study in China of institutional discourse in a dynamic approch to the study of politeness in the real context. This study may contribute to shifting the study of institutional politeness from the Gricean paradigm which abstracts away from the real context to a more down to ground approach in China.