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A Shift Towards Politeness in Doctor-Patient Consultation: A Case Study in Australia

Received: 10 August 2022    Accepted: 3 September 2022    Published: 14 September 2022
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Abstract

This paper includes a detailed analysis of a consultation between a general practitioner and his male patient in a Canberra suburb. This study illustrates the shift toward a model of patient-centeredness which is applaused in Australia. The purpose of this study is not only to reinforce the new concept of medical consultation – patient-centeredness but also to confirm the necessity of change in medical discourse and reveal the reasons that lead to the movement in doctor talk. The data was collected by note taking and recording which was later transcribed for the aim of data analyses. The researcher’s role was that of the passive ethnographic researcher, playing no further role in the consultation. In other words, there was no intervention when the consultation occurred. Therefore, the information obtained from the consultation was completely natural. The theoretical framework used in this current study is Conversation Analysis (CA) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) which transcribed the discourse of doctor talk. Aspects of data analyses were followed by a bottom-up approach and conducted by both qualitative and quantitative methods. This paper concludes that the language of the doctor cannot standstill when the language of society is always changing. In other words, the doctor’s language in this study has obviously been affected by the language used in Australian society. The movement towards a trend of politeness, informality and solidarity in the Australian language has entailed a shift in the language of Australian doctors.

Published in International Journal of Language and Linguistics (Volume 10, Issue 5)
DOI 10.11648/j.ijll.20221005.11
Page(s) 275-287
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Doctor-Patient Consultation, Conversation Analysis (CA), Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), Turn-Takings, Lexico-Grammatical Characteristics

References
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  • APA Style

    Thanh Nga Nguyen. (2022). A Shift Towards Politeness in Doctor-Patient Consultation: A Case Study in Australia. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 10(5), 275-287. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20221005.11

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    Thanh Nga Nguyen. A Shift Towards Politeness in Doctor-Patient Consultation: A Case Study in Australia. Int. J. Lang. Linguist. 2022, 10(5), 275-287. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20221005.11

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    AMA Style

    Thanh Nga Nguyen. A Shift Towards Politeness in Doctor-Patient Consultation: A Case Study in Australia. Int J Lang Linguist. 2022;10(5):275-287. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20221005.11

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ijll.20221005.11,
      author = {Thanh Nga Nguyen},
      title = {A Shift Towards Politeness in Doctor-Patient Consultation: A Case Study in Australia},
      journal = {International Journal of Language and Linguistics},
      volume = {10},
      number = {5},
      pages = {275-287},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ijll.20221005.11},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20221005.11},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijll.20221005.11},
      abstract = {This paper includes a detailed analysis of a consultation between a general practitioner and his male patient in a Canberra suburb. This study illustrates the shift toward a model of patient-centeredness which is applaused in Australia. The purpose of this study is not only to reinforce the new concept of medical consultation – patient-centeredness but also to confirm the necessity of change in medical discourse and reveal the reasons that lead to the movement in doctor talk. The data was collected by note taking and recording which was later transcribed for the aim of data analyses. The researcher’s role was that of the passive ethnographic researcher, playing no further role in the consultation. In other words, there was no intervention when the consultation occurred. Therefore, the information obtained from the consultation was completely natural. The theoretical framework used in this current study is Conversation Analysis (CA) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) which transcribed the discourse of doctor talk. Aspects of data analyses were followed by a bottom-up approach and conducted by both qualitative and quantitative methods. This paper concludes that the language of the doctor cannot standstill when the language of society is always changing. In other words, the doctor’s language in this study has obviously been affected by the language used in Australian society. The movement towards a trend of politeness, informality and solidarity in the Australian language has entailed a shift in the language of Australian doctors.},
     year = {2022}
    }
    

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    T2  - International Journal of Language and Linguistics
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    AB  - This paper includes a detailed analysis of a consultation between a general practitioner and his male patient in a Canberra suburb. This study illustrates the shift toward a model of patient-centeredness which is applaused in Australia. The purpose of this study is not only to reinforce the new concept of medical consultation – patient-centeredness but also to confirm the necessity of change in medical discourse and reveal the reasons that lead to the movement in doctor talk. The data was collected by note taking and recording which was later transcribed for the aim of data analyses. The researcher’s role was that of the passive ethnographic researcher, playing no further role in the consultation. In other words, there was no intervention when the consultation occurred. Therefore, the information obtained from the consultation was completely natural. The theoretical framework used in this current study is Conversation Analysis (CA) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) which transcribed the discourse of doctor talk. Aspects of data analyses were followed by a bottom-up approach and conducted by both qualitative and quantitative methods. This paper concludes that the language of the doctor cannot standstill when the language of society is always changing. In other words, the doctor’s language in this study has obviously been affected by the language used in Australian society. The movement towards a trend of politeness, informality and solidarity in the Australian language has entailed a shift in the language of Australian doctors.
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Author Information
  • Department of Foreign Languages, Vietnam Military Medical University, Hanoi, Vietnam

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