Week 4: Exploring the language of health communication

Introduction

Have you ever considered the place of language in medical settings? When you go to a doctor’s surgery, hospital, health centre or any healthcare setting and consult with a medical practitioner, who initiates the conversation? How do you address each other? And how formal or informal is the language used?

Figure 1 A medical practitioner checks a patient’s blood pressure

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The scene is in a medical consulting room, with a sink and examination couch visible in the background. A man (standing on the left) is having his blood pressure checked by a female medical practitioner (standing on the right).

Figure 1 A medical practitioner checks a patient’s blood pressure

This week you’ll look at an important aspect of the language of health communication: language used by medical practitioners such as doctors, nurses within their regular clinical practice.

By the end of this week, you should be able to:

• understand some of the ways in which clinical consultation is managed, and how shared meaning is negotiated in doctor-patient dialogues
• see how conversation analysis is helpful in exploring oral communication
• try out the different stages in a medical consultation.