Hedges in the medical intake interview: Discourse task, gender and role

The purpose of this study is to analyze medical intake interviews between resident physicians and simulated patients to determine if hedges occur within this speech environment, as well as to ascertain if the use of these hedges is linked to the gender and/or status of the participants in the medical setting, and, to note the forms and pragmatic functions that they serve.; I analyze the initial segments of 31 videotaped medical intake interviews between 8 physicians (4 male and 4 female) and 4 simulated patients (2 male and 2 female). Each simulated patient is interviewed by 8 physicians over a 6 month period. A total of 7.75 hours of videotaped data are analyzed. Analysis focuses on the extended discourse of task episodes.; The study shows that gender is not significant in accounting for the use of hedges. Role and discourse task are significant factors; though the patients had the opportunity to use hedges over twice as often as physicians, they actually used them almost four times as often, regardless of the gender of either participant. This difference in usage by role is attributed to the differing discourse tasks of the participants, e.g., physicians use hedges when directing the discourse of the interviews, and patients use hedges when they are describing past traumatic experiences and symptoms. Furthermore, the use of hedges is found to facilitate linguistic accommodation on the affective level, and mitigation on the discourse level of the interview, and is linked to the diagnostic and discourse tasks essential to the medical encounter.; This study provides patients and physicians with insights on how to improve their communication skills through the use of linguistic forms which realize positive politeness strategies and facilitate comprehension. It further provides linguists with a better understanding of the use of linguistic forms that have previously been associated with gender differences in language usage, but in this study are related to the specific discourse tasks of the participants (i.e., the analytical task of the physician and the informative task of the patient). Finally, it emphasizes the important role that language plays in the diagnosis, care and treatment of patients in the medical setting.