| The study of overinformative response exercised by Chinese e-patients in answer to doctors’question attempts to investigate its forms and functions during online medical consultations(OMCs)from a pragmatic perspective.Overinformative responses are defined as the process of providing additional information apart from the information necessarily needed to the doctor’s satisfaction in the ongoing online communication between the doctor and the e-patient.Based on previous studies of overinformative responses,this study used Edmonson’s supportive moves(1981)as the theoretical framework,by using qualitative methods on the empirical research of 567 pieces of OMCs and attempted to report on the following two questions:1.What forms of overinformative responses are used by e-patients during Chinese OMCs from the perspective of information quantity?2.According to Edmonson’s supportive moves(1981),what functions do these overinformative responses embrace in OMCs?This study drew the following conclusions:Firstly,it is found that e-patients’ overinformative responses can be formally categorized into mono-propositional and multi-propositional categories.Secondly,on the functional level,overinformative responses can be primarily employed by the patients for the purposes of grounding,expanding,disarming,self-disarming,and negotiating in the context of OMCs;Theoretically,this study verifies the applicability and validity of Edmonson’s supportive moves(1981)on the study of e-patients’overinformative responses in online medial context and proliferates the theoretical and empirical study of overinformative responses on Chinese discourse.Practically,the current study will not only contribute to doctors’ further understanding of e-patient discourse in OMCs,but also sheds new light on the identification and interpretation of e-patients’ pressing request for diagnosis. |
