A CP-directed Study Of Doctor-Patient Oral Interaction In Outpatient Departments

The cooperative principle is both an important principle of pragmatics and a primary principle guiding human interactions and communications. As a research focus, the cooperative principle has attracted more and more researchers in the past decades. Presently, both at home and abroad, the general study of the cooperative principle is more about ordinary interaction, but the study about institutional interaction is rare. As an important institutional interaction, the doctor-patient interaction is closely related to our daily life. Therefore, this thesis mainly studies the cooperation problem in doctor-patient interaction.The research object of this thesis is the oral interaction between doctors and patients in outpatient departments of Chinese hospitals. The corpus used in this study is collected by the writer, in January and February,2014, from seven major departments in outpatients in a Grade A hospital in Shanxi province. The 12 doctor-patient dialogues are selected randomly from the 49 recorded corpus.Based on a relevant literature review of doctor-patient interaction researches home and abroad, the CP-directed analytical framework for doctor-patient interaction is constructed by transcribing and translating the recorded corpus collected from a Grade A hospital in Shanxi province. From the viewpoint of pragmatics, this framework analyzes the compliance and violation of new type cooperative principle during the six stages of the doctor-patient oral interaction in outpatient departments and also the current doctor-patient relationship revealed in the interaction.According to the five maxims of the new cooperative principle, this thesis mainly analyzes the compliance and violation of the five maxims at each stage of the doctor-patient oral interaction in outpatient departments. The results of the study show: (1) When answering the doctor’s question, most patients violate the Maxim of Quantity. (2) Many patients violate the Maxim of Relevance. (3) Many patients often violate the Maxim of Manner. (4) Most doctors often comply with the Maxim of Quality and violate the Maxim of Quantity. (5) Both doctors and patients may violate the Maxim of Attitude, and most patients will violate the Maxim of Attitude.In a word, both the doctor and the patient should comply with the new cooperative principle in the six stages of doctor-patient oral interaction in outpatient departments, so as to promote the successful medical care and the friendly doctor-patient relationship.