Doctors' Politeness Strategies in Doctor-Patient Interaction: A Case Study of Boston Med

Politeness is essential in establishing good interpersonal relationships and maintaining social harmony. By adopting the Face Theory proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987), this study aims to analyze doctors’ politeness strategies in doctor-patient interactions with the documentary Boston Med as an example. Results show that doctors tend to employ four positive politeness strategies and two negative politeness strategies, with the latter being preferable.

Ainsworth-Vaughn, N. (1998). Claiming power in doctor-patient talk. New York: Oxford University Press.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage (Vol. 4). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Campion, P., & Langdon, M. (2004). Achieving multiple topic shifts in primary care medical consultations: A conversation analysis study in UK general practice. Sociology of Health & Illness, 26(1), 81-101.

Gu, Y. G. (1997). Five ways of handling a bedpan: A tripartite approach to workplace discourse. Text & Talk, 17(4), 457-476.

Hill, B., Ide, S., Ikuta, S., Kawasaki, A., & Ogino, T. (1986). Universals of linguistic politeness: Quantitative evidence from Japanese and American English. Journal of Pragmatics, 10, 347-371.

Hu, Y. (2016). Comparative analysis of politeness strategy adopted by doctors and patients in clinical interaction. Medicine & Philosophy (B), 37(5), 82-85.

Landmark, A. M., Gulbrandsen, P., & Svennevig, J. (2015). Whose decision? Negotiating epistemic and deontic rights in medical treatment decisions. Journal of Pragmatics, 78, 54-69.

Wang, J. J. (2002). Questions and power relations in doctor-patient talk. Journal of PLA University of Foreign Languages, 25(5), 10-14.

West, C. (1984). Routine complications: Troubles with talk between doctors and patients. Bloomington: Indian Univ. Press.

Zhao, C., & Ma, W. (2020). Patient resistance towards clinicians’ diagnostic test-taking advice and its management in Chinese outpatient clinic interaction. Social Science & Medicine, 258, 113041.