Discursive Features Of Medical Disputes In China

In recent years, China has witnessed increasingly common medical disputes. Medical dispute is not just a political, legal or ethical issue, but also a discursive process. The general research question of the present study is:What is medical dispute discourse? In the light of the methodology of conversation analysis and cultural discourse studies, two typical violent medical dispute cases were carefully investigated. The study is carried out both from a micro perspective (institutional talk) and a macro (historical, social and cultural) perspective.According to the conversation analysis of two fatal medical disputes in Harbin and Wenling, the doctors tended to use jargon and provided insufficient information to the patients. The tenor of their dialogue was consultative and the doctor-patient dialogues were more often dominated by the doctors. The medical dispute discourse continued in the form of public discourse on the medical dispute, which involved multiple subjects, namely, medical personnel, patients or their families, government, the public and the media. They were the speakers as well as the receivers. The speakers spoke in different forms and through different channels. The consequences of these discourses were also different. The medical staff relied much on the academic medical website which was exclusive to them. Hence, they were not easily heard by the public. The government spoke through press conferences or documents. The patients, as the criminals in these two cases could only speak through the interviews by some media, yet they were heard and echoed by some netizens. The media had the easiest access to the channels to make comments. Comparing the reports of two cases, we could see the media had shifted its role from a communicator to a mediator. Finally, the study explored the cultural and historical roots of the doctor-patient discourse.