Transitivity Analysis Of Doctor-patient Conversations In A Remote Town Clinic In China

Transitivity analysis in systemic functional grammar can be used to reveal the ideational function in conversations. Through such analysis we can see experiences of people involved in language activities. Since 1970s, doctor-patient communication has become an important research field in the world. Studies on doctor-patient communication sprang up like mushrooms and research methods varied much. It is in the 1990s that Chinese doctor-patient conversation began to appear. But few studies on Chinese doctor-patient conversations start from the viewpoint of transitivity analysis. Therefore, this thesis aims to carry out a tentative research on Chinese doctor-patient conversations from the perspective of transitivity analysis. It is expected to provide some contributions in this field.This thesis is based on the self-built corpora (made up of 32 medical cases collected from the same town clinic). Halliday (2000) points out that transitivity system is made up of six process types. They are material process, mental process, relational process, verbal process, existential process and behavioral process. The author firstly identifies clauses-process types and then takes advantage of data analysis software Antconc 3.3.5 to get the total numbers of each process type and analyze its distribution and frequency.The main findings of this thesis are as follows through data analysis:(1) Those six process types by Halliday (2000) all occur in the medical conversations collected from the clinic but they have different distributions and frequencies. Among those six process types, material process occurs most frequently in medical conversations. Its occurrence sums up to 997 times, and it makes up a percentage of 78.26% in all process types.(2) Distributions and occurrence frequencies of all six process types identified in patients’ utterances are higher than those of process types in doctors’ utterances. Among those six process types, existential process takes up 75% in all process types and material process is used most frequently. It sums up to 535 times. Distributions and frequencies of those process types in Chinese doctor-patient conversations are as follows:existential process identified in patients’utterance occurs 21 times and takes up 75% in the whole existential process, existential process in doctors’utterance (7,25%); material process in patients’utterance (535,53.66%), material process in doctors’utterance (462,46.34%); mental process in patients’ utterance (41,68.33%), mental process in doctors" utterance (19, 31.67%); relational process in patients’utterance (52,55.32%), relational process in doctors’utterance (42,44.68%); verbal process in patients’utterance (29,50.88%), verbal process in doctors’utterance (28,49.12%); behavioral process in patients’utterance (27, 71.05%), behavioral process in doctors’utterance (11,28.95%).From the above analysis, we can safely arrive at the conclusions:(1) the analysis of six process types in transitivity system can reflect objective and informative characteristics of Chinese doctor-patient communications. From the above data, it can be seen that material process and relational process occupy the dominant place in the corpus made up of 32 medical cases. It also shows that doctors and patients emphasize how to express themselves objectively and efficiently in the process of illness treatment and symptom statement. The occurrence frequency of mental process is basically consistent with that of verbal process. Both of them lay in the subordinate place. Mental process shows human beings’internal conscious experience and verbal process can realize information exchange. Behavioral process and existential process have low occurrence frequencies. The former tends to express emotion and the latter aims to express something existing or happening:(2) this thesis makes a comparison of distribution and occurrence frequency of each process type, and then contrasts distribution and occurrence frequency of each process type in patients’ utterance with those of each process type in doctors’ utterance respectively. It is beneficial for readers to have a good understanding of doctors’ and patients’ psychological states in doctor-patient conversations.This thesis makes a tentative research on Chinese doctor-patient conversations from the perspective of transitivity analysis and language materials are collected from the same town clinic which was paid less attention before. Through data analysis, the author explores distributions and frequencies of those six process types and makes comparisons of distribution and frequency of each process types in patients’ and doctors’ utterance. The main findings are contributed to having a good understanding of rules of medical conversations for doctors and patients themselves, are also beneficial for successful communication and can provide some guidance for future studies on Chinese doctor-patient conversations from the viewpoint of transitivity analysis to some extent.