Hedges As(Im)Politeness Strategies In Audiotape-Based Doctor-Patient Communication

Doctor-patient communication plays an important role in the building of doctor-patient relationship. Therefore, both doctors and patients pay great attention to the application of communicative strategies, one of which being the use of hedges.The thesis conducts a research on the usage and pragmatic functions of hedges with reference to the local context in Chinese doctor-patient communication. The data in the thesis include 100 transcripts of audiotaped consultations in different Chinese hospitals and clinics collected by college student volunteers of Huaqiao University during the 2013-2014 winter vacation. The transcripts are proofread by the author. Quantitative and qualitative methodologies are adopted here. ROST Content Mining 5.0 is drawn on to analyze the frequency of hedges in medical encounters.(Im)politeness Theory is employed as the theoretical framework to uncover hedges emerging as(im)politeness strategies in Chinese doctor-patient communication.The thesis focuses on the following four questions:(1) What are the frequency and features of hedges used by both doctors and patients?(2) How are hedges used in doctor-patient communication from the perspective of(im)politeness?(3) Is it possible for patients to be impolite in some cases? And if it is, why are they impolite?(4) What are the differences in response options between doctors and patients when they are faced with impoliteness?The thesis finds that(1)both doctors and patients use such hedges as“一点”“很”and so on and so forth for their own purposes.A new type of approximators occurring frequently in the communication is named frequenters;(2)hedges are bifunctional in doctor-patient communication:on the one hand,both sides tend to use hedges as politeness strategies to maintain each other’s face,which,in turn,contributes to good doctor-patient relationship;on the other hand,the use of hedges can either be direct impoliteness to the hearer or strengthen the disagreement between the speaker and the hearer;(3)the majority of impoliteness strategies are undertaken on doctors’part,but patients can also be occasionally impolite which may result from the development of patient-centered approach in which they are expected to express their opinions more and more frequently;(4)when faced with impoliteness,there exist some differences in response options between doctors and patients.Doctors tend to counter face attack with face attack,either with offensive or defensive strategies,while patients are prone to keep silent,accept or occasionally counter with defensive strategies.They rarely adopt offensive strategies.The result of the present study is of significance in several aspects. Theoretically speaking, hedges functioning as impoliteness strategies are the complement to Brown and Levinson’s(1987) theory of politeness which sees hedges as a kind of negative politeness strategies. The result can also strengthen the explanatory capacity of Culpeper’s(1996, 2005) impoliteness framework and may help enrich the research theory on hedges. Practically speaking, the data collected for the thesis can expand the corpus scope of the studies on Chinese doctor-patient communication; last but not least, the thesis can promote the understanding of the important position of hedges in doctor-patient communication and thereby contribute to the improvement of communicative strategies adopted by doctors and patients and even of their relationship.