Expert Claims in Clinical Meetings: Analysing the Relational Role of Medical Jargon

Abstract

This paper explores how a group of clinicians discursively constructs their expert stances using medical jargon as they discuss their professional practices and patients’ cases at a clinic. Guided by the discursive analytic tradition of interactional sociolinguistics, the analysis is based on naturally-occurring conversations that have been audio and video recorded during four clinical meetings in a healthcare setting in New Zealand. This paper shows that the use of medical jargon plays a vital role in constructing expert stances that address the interactional, and especially relational, needs of participants in these clinical meetings. In particular, the paper discusses the role of medical jargon in the construction of clinicians’ expert stances when building ingroup alignments, managing professional criticism and managing disagreement in peer-peer interactions. Concluding remarks offer reflections on the role of medical jargon in the construction of clinicians’ relational stance and the need to further investigate the use of specialised jargon in other contexts of peer communication.