The Sociolinguistic and Pragmatic Aspects of Medical Professionals-Patient Communication in OPD: Kotebe Health Center

The Sociolinguistic and Pragmatic aspects of Medical Professionals-Patient Communication in OPD: Kotebe Health Center

Abstract

Doctor-patient communication is one of the interpersonal communication and a central clinical function in building a therapeutic doctor-patient relationship, which is the heart and art of medicine. This is important in the delivery of high-quality health care. But Patients complain that the doctors are not willing to listen to them, do not answer their questions or inform them properly, they are authoritative and unhelpful. Doctors, on the other hand, criticize their patients for not following their advice.

Thus, this study will analyze the sociolinguistic and pragmatic aspects of Medical professionals and patient communication from a focal point of the use of terminology, register, solidarity and status, language and group membership, and code-switching in language from the sociolinguistic perspective and from the pragmatic part it deals with the use of language in social context and emphasize the ‘functionality’ of utterances performed in medical contexts of interaction which attempts to address the speech act theory, the maxims and the paralinguistic feature of the language. The study focuses on Kotebe Health center which is under Yeka sub city that provides primary health care for the general population specifically on the communication between six medical professionals (MP) two doctors and four health officers and their patients that is each MP observe an average of forty to fifty patients per day. And the methodology used to collect the data will be interview; observations and questioners’ plus by using instrument of voice recorder. The qualitative data which will be find from the conversation will be analyze and try to inspect Following two questions; those are, why patients are not more effective in asserting themselves in talking with medical professionals, and why medical professionals don't talk more like regular people.