Strategy Use In Unequal Encounters:impoliteness Strategies In Doctor-Patient Questions

Politeness,a linguistic phenomenon,has been put into the spotlight ever since the born of the politeness principle proposed by linguists Brown and Levinson(1978).Meanwhile,impoliteness has also attracted the attention of many scholars,like Culpeper and Bousfield.They are devoted to this field and have made enormous achievements for the future exploration of impoliteness.The present study aims to explore the verbal impoliteness behaviors reflected by questions in doctor-patient conversations,the differences of impoliteness strategies used by the two parties and the pragmatic functions of them.This research is based on Culpeper`s and Bousfield`s impoliteness theory frameworks.Research materials are taken from E.R.,a hot American medical drama.Hopefully,the study can provide some enlightments on the links between questions and impoliteness,help medical service providers and recipients gain a better mutual understanding,and make a positive contribution to the study on doctor-patient communication.The findings are as follows: 1)The on-record impoliteness and off-record impoliteness proposed by Bousfield are both found in the study.In terms of their frequency,both doctors and patients tend to use direct impolite strategies.2)Questions regarded as impolite behaviors occur more frequently in patients` discourse.In addition,more impoliteness strategies are revealed in patients` impolite questions.3)Though doctors are presumed to own more power than patients in medical settings,they behave more politely when it comes to the adoption of impolite questions.Most of their impolite questions are for the good of patients.Besides,they will mitigate their emotionally-strong questions like a disagreement expression to avoid more face-loss of patients.4)Three pragmatic functions are embodied in a large number of doctors` and patients` impolite questions,namely,affective function,institutional function and coercive function.Entertaining function could also be found in questions,but only a few.And patients adopt this strategy more than patients.