INTERROGATIVE SENTENCES IN DOCTOR – PATIENT COMMUNICATION IN ENGLISH: SELECTION CRITERIA

Abstract

Background. Communication between doctor and patient is an important component of the treatment process. The main task of the doctor is to collect all the necessary information about the patient’s problem and the history of its occurrence, to clarify all the circumstances of the situation and to offer options for action. In order to solve this problem, it is necessary to use certain speech means that should help the doctor get all the information and get what they want from the patient. Questions are one of the means that determine the effectiveness of interaction. Purpose. The purpose of the study of this article is to analyze the interrogative sentences used in the doctor – patient dialogues in English, to determine their communicative load, to identify the most frequent constructions and to describe the criteria for choosing the types of interrogative sentences. Materials and methods. The material of the study was the scripts of conversations between doctors and patients in English, presented in open sources. In the course of the study, a continuous sample of interrogative sentences used by the doctor was carried out. The questions were divided into types according to their grammatical structure, the communicative load of each type was determined. The most and least frequent types of questions are singled out, possible grounds for such a pattern are identified. Results. The article describes the main types of questions in English in terms of their grammatical structure: general, special, alternative and disjunctive. The results of own research based on the material of audio recordings and their scripts of conversations between doctors of various specialties and their patients at various stages of the treatment process are presented. In the process of research, each type of questions was analyzed in the context of their use in order to describe their communicative load. This approach made it possible to identify criteria for selecting certain types of questions, which are determined by the target settings of the communicative “doctor-patient” situation. Practical implications. The results of the study can be applied in the practice of teaching Medical English, in the professional activities of healthcare professionals when communicating with patients, in theoretical courses on English grammar.

Keywords

• doctor – patient communication
• types of interrogative sentences
• purpose of communication