A Study Of Trust Construction And Strategies In Doctor-Patient Discourse Interactions From The Perspective Of Interpersonal Pragmatics

Interpersonal pragmatics,first raised by Locher&Graham(2010),has been the focus of many linguistic researches recently.Different from pragmatics,interpersonal pragmatics mainly studies how people build and deal with interpersonal relationships with language in social occasions.It pays attention to how people use language when dealing with interpersonal communication and relationships,not just the nature of language.With its interdisciplinary feature,interpersonal pragmatics is a bridge between pragmatics and communication.Compared with traditional pragmatics,interpersonal pragmatics extends the research scope of pragmatics.With the continuous development and deepening of the study,the research of interpersonal pragmatics focuses upon exploring other non-linguistic aspects,such as face,politeness,human feelings,interpersonal relationships and so on.As a relatively sensitive kind of relationship,the communication between doctors and patients is of great significance,especially with doctor-patient conflicts occurring frequently in recent years.Therefore,this thesis is aiming at exploring the current situation of doctor-patient trust relations from the perspective of interpersonal pragmatics based on a selfbuilt corpus concerning authentic doctor-patient discourse interactions.In the conclusion part,the thesis tries to put forward some constructive suggestions for the practice of doctor-patient interactions and make contributions to the establishment of a new type of doctor-patient relationship featuring equality,interaction and cooperation.The research questions this paper manages to solve include the following ones:What is the overall structure of authentic doctor-patient discourse?How are the doctor-patient discourse interactions constructed from the perspective of trust and rapport?What strategies are employed for better doctor-patient trust relations?More specifically,in the process of analysis,the thesis discusses the above issues from four aspects of the doctor-patient outpatient discourse interaction,including the corresponding structure of doctor-patient outpatient conversation interaction,the trust relations between doctors and patients,the failures in doctor-patient discourse and the strategies applied for the construction of doctor-patient trust relations.Through thorough analysis and discussions of the authentic doctorpatient discourse interactions,the thesis has the following major findings:firstly,the overall structure of doctor-patient dialogue is relatively stable.There are generally six stages in an outpatient conversation,that is,the beginning,condition statement,data collection(history inquiry,physical examination),diagnosis,treatment suggestions and the end.Secondly,doctors and patients trust each other most of the time,and such trust relations between them can be demonstrated from three dimensions as ability,quality,and goodwill.Thirdly,there are also problems in the communication between doctors and patients that cause trust issues.Failures in doctor-patient conversations can lie in the violation of the management of face,social rights and obligations,and interactional goals.Fourthly,when constructing trust relationship with patients,doctors usually use two types of strategies:they either emphasize the positive or neutralize the negative.On the basis of the above findings,the study puts forward suggestions concerning doctor-patient discourse from the perspective of linguistics.These suggestions are mainly discussed from three aspects of interaction,politeness,and communication skills,which can play a positive role in easing the contradictions between doctors and patients during their communication,building and improving the trust relationship between the two parties.