Culturally-shaped linguistic themes of doctor-patient encounters in Mosuli Arabic : a conversation analysis

Abstract EN

While the main defining linguistic characters of the medical consultation are relatively shared around the world, there are some culturally specific themes within different societies.

Through conversation analysis, we studied the routines of seventy five doctor-patient encounters in order to shed light on some of the peculiar linguistic features of Mosuli Arabic observed throughout various stages of the medical consultation from opening up to closure.

Such features include certain unique conversational strategies that are used to shape various social actions during the course of the medical encounter, such as expression of empathy, recognition of “doctorability” of patient’s illness, and establishing rapport and collaboration between doctors and patients.

The study adopted Heritage's (2004) analytical model, to probe the six defining features representing the “institutionality” of doctor-patient encounters, attempting to answer the question whether there are any peculiar linguistic patterns of communication during doctor-patient encounters in Mosuli Arabic.

The study hypothesizes that although doctor-patient encounters seem to be an extremely organized social activity, there must be some peculiar local linguistic defining features within the local Mosuli Arabic community.

Our findings have shown that Mosuli Arabic is in fact rich in unique linguistic resources, in form of lexical and syntactic choices in particular, that can be usefully employed during doctor-patient communication.