Linguistic Trends in Doctor-Patient Communication

Abstract

Effective communication between doctors and patients is vital for successful consultations. Language plays a key role in making the communication between the doctor and the patient effective. Discourse studies that study language at its micro, as well as at its macro level, provide valuable insights into medical consultations. The objective of the present study is to provide an overview of various linguistic trends that emerged over time to examine talk in doctor-patient consultations. Studies examining doctor-patient discourse have been grouped under Interaction Analysis system, Rhetorical Genre Studies, Conversation analysis, sociolinguistics, Pragmatics, Ethnography, and Systemic Functional Linguistics. It was observed that the linguistic trends that emerged in other contexts were rarely applied to Indian medical consultations. Therefore, there is a need to study Indian doctor-patient consultations using discourse frameworks to arrive at findings that may be used to promote effective communication between the participants.