Investigation on Opening Phatic Communication in Iranian Clinical Consultations: A Sociolinguistic Perspective

In linguistics, a phatic expression is one whose only function is to perform a social task, as opposed to conveying information. They are used as conversation openers, to establish and maintain contact with people, to show that you’re listening, and/or to give you time to think of something else to say. They don’t usually have much meaning in themselves. Greetings and farewells are also examples of phatic language. In any professional activity, language plays an important function. However, different professionals use language differently according to the aims of participants, the context, and the type of activity, the role of participants, the social norms, politeness rules, and the degree of formality in the specific professional contexts. In clinical consultations, doctors and patients try to align their efforts to meet the goal of consultation which is diagnosis and treatment. The general pattern of a clinical consultation, as an activity type, normally includes: opening, history taking, examining, diagnosis, offering treatment, and terminating. This study analyses the structure of opening phase in clinical consultation in Iranian bilingual and multicultural setting (Ahvaz) in which the participants are native speakers of Farsi. This paper will discuss and categorize, in particular, the opening of 30 consultations which reveal a unique feature of the consultations.

کلیدواژه ها:

phatic expression ، Sociolinguistic ، Clinical Consultations