Kabi, Shiva

An Analysis of the Role of Face-Threatening Acts and Politeness Strategies in Greys Anatomy, Oxford Medical Books, Nurses

AbstractA number of pragmatics oriented corpus linguistics and discourse analytic studies havebeen conducted on politeness strategies but with insufficient attention paid to MedicalDiscourse MD English for Specific Purposes ESP for doctors and medical pedagogy Thus this study explores language use in Bedside Manner BM in context of USA andUK with the objective of exploring the specific Face Threatening Acts FTAs andPoliteness Strategies PSs employed among doctor doctor doctor patient patient patient doctor visitor patient visitor patient patient doctor lawyer doctor pilot nurse nurse nurse security security paramedics nurse paramedics doctor paramedics nurse patient nurse lawyer and nurse visitor and doctor bartender to enhance diagnosticcommunication in MD The medical corpus Grey s Anatomy Nurses and Oxford Englishfor Careers Medicine1 and 2 are analyzed based on Brown and Levinson s model 1987 by two raters The findings of this study demonstrate there are 1382 FTAs in Grey sAnatomy 352 apologies as the most frequent FTA and 32 FTAs in Oxford medical books 8 gratitudes as the most frequent FTA have been studied and 144 FTAs in Nurses withorder N 33 as the most frequent FTA Moreover there are 432 PSs in Grey s Anatomy 68 questions negative PS the most frequent PS and 134 PSs in Oxford medical books 32indirect negative PS as the most frequent PS and 146 PSs in Nurses with questions as themost frequent negative PS N 43 have been found The results of the present study havesome implications First findings of this study may prevent any communicationbreakdowns in the spoken MD for foreign medical students and nurse practitioners Second future physicians may become more cautious while providing their patients the BMresulting in a more successful medical practices Third material developers may becomemore al‎e‎rt of the above mentioned pragmatic elements while authoring or analyzingEnglish audio visual materials in the field of MD Finally ESP teachers may become morevigilant regarding the use of PSs Keywords Bedside Manner Discourse Face Threatening Acts Medical Discourse Politeness Strategies Pragmatics Speech Act iii