Analysing discourse in doctor-patient interaction : the Maltese and Gozitan contexts

Abstract

This dissertation attempts to look at doctor-patient interaction, analysing the structure of discourse in its social and situational context, paying particular attention to the different ways in which in which doctors and patients claim power through talk. It tries to answer whether power is shared by doctors and patients and whether any gender differences that might exist in this field leave an influence on this. Many studies conducted in other countries have shown that doctor-patient encounters are substantially asymmetrical interactions which mainly consist of doctors asking questions and patients answering. This dissertation is an attempt to discover whether this is also true for the Maltese islands or whether local patients are more active in claiming power through talk with doctors being more willing to share power. It seeks to provide new information about talk in medical encounters in Malta and Gozo as this topic is rather uncommon in surveys usually carried out. The first chapter reviews the notions of language and power in medical encounters proposed by leading researchers in this field, such as Ainsworth-Vaughn, Romaine, Wardhaugh, Sacks and Tannen. The aim of the study conducted and dealt with in Chapters 3 and 4 is to validate or weaken the issues pointed out by these researchers. Chapter 2 gives information on qualitative and quantitative research methodologies both of which were used to gather the data. Both patients and doctors were interviewed to find out what they think about medical encounters. In the final chapter, Chapter 5, all the findings from the quantitative and qualitative research methods are analysed and compared to data collected by other researchers in previous studies, such as Cartwright (1967), Davis and Eichhorn (1963) and Cartwright & Anderson (1981). From this the final conclusions are drawn out, bringing out the different ways in which patients can lay claim to power through talk.