engleski

Corpus linguistics in the study of doctor-patient communication

Patient perspectives have gained much interest in the study of doctor-patient communication over the past few decades. The language patients use, ‘patient talk’, has indeed been recognized as different from the medical language, often labelled as professional jargon. Differences between ‘doctor talk’ and ‘patient talk’ are seldom explored using linguistic methods traditionally used in the humanities. A rather new discipline of corpus linguistics, owing much to the recent developments in information technology, provides the sound basis for explaining what the communication message looks like from the two different perspectives. This study explored those differences in information for surgical patients when designed by doctors and by patients. Analyses of frequencies and concordances, including factor analysis, were done to explore the differences in more depth. Although the results obtained are based on texts written in one language, the differences are presented graphically, and are not language-specific or language dependent. Moreover, they support the observations of differences between the ‘medical model’ and ‘story model’ of the communication process. The results indicate that patient perspective from the linguistic point of view means much more than mere avoidance of jargon or external assessment of information suitability. They also strongly suggest involvement of patients in development of any written materials intended for use by patients when shared decision making is the ultimate goal.

corpus linguistics; doctor-patient communication; shared decision-making; patient involvement

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