Conversation Analysis Of The Third Party's Talk In Accompanied Medical Interaction

Accompanied medical interaction is a kind of characteristic communication.Nowadays,doctor-patient interaction does not involve only two parties.With family members,friends and even colleagues accompanying patients to seek medical consultations,a doctor-patient encounter has gradually involved into a doctor-patient-the accompanying third party encounter.To some extent,it has become an invisible social convention that even if patients are cognitively and communicatively competent,the third parties would still intervene in the interaction between doctors and patients as communication participants.Therefore,this study aims to reveal the third party's conversational characteristics from the perspective of conversation analysis.Through both qualitative and quantitative analysis,this study explores the third party's turn allocation,sequence types and functions performed in accompanied medical interaction through the analysis of the manners,positions and functions of the third party intervening in doctor-patient communication,thus revealing the third party's roles in accompanied medical interaction.This study tries to answer the following questions:(1)How are turns distributed in accompanied medical interaction?(2)How are the third party's turns allocated in accompanied medical interaction?(3)What are the types of the third party's sequences in accompanied medical interaction?(4)What functions do the third party's turns perform in accompanied medical interaction?In order to solve the above research questions,the author collected the conversations of doctor-pregnant woman-family member from a fertility documentary This Is Life,transcribed and analyzed them.Finally,this study has achieved the following results:(1)The number of doctors' turns is the largest,which occupies nearly half of the total number of turns in accompanied medical interaction.The number of turns the third parties hold takes the second place,while the proportion of patients'turns in accompanied medical interaction is the lowest,which suggests that as a companion,the third party has a high degree of participation in doctor-patient communication;(2)The third party takes the floor by two main ways:other-selection and self-selection.In the ways of other-selection,doctor appointing the third party as the next speaker is the primary way,which indicates that the third parties'discourse right in accompanied medical interaction is recognized by doctors.Among the six ways of self-selection,no-pause turn-taking is the primary way for the third party to take the floor,which indicates that the third party has a high interactive initiative and strong consciousness of competing for turns in accompanied medical interaction;(3)The third party's sequences can serve as different elements including the first pair part,the second pair part,insertion-sequence,and post-sequence in doctor-patient conversations,which shows that the third party can flexibly intervene in doctor-patient communication and plays an active role in completing doctor-patient conversation structure;(4)The third party intervening in doctor-patient communication performs different functions such as providing information,asking for information,giving feedback,assisting doctor-patient communication,making medical suggestions,comforting patients and so on.The above functions reflect three roles established by the third party:facilitator,intermediary,and co-doctor.This research can provide some implications for doctors who are involved in accompanied medical interaction and help them better understand the third party's conversational characteristics,roles and functions performed in accompanied medical encounters,thus making the third party play a supporting role in doctor-patient communication to the largest extent by properly adjusting the three parties' turn allocation,so as to achieve effective doctor-patient-the third party communication,reduce medical disputes and make the best use of this resource to provide the maximum effective treatment for patients.