Journal of Languages for Specific Purposes (Mar 2017)
STRATÉGIES DE CONSTRUCTION D’UN DISCOURS POSITIF. LE CAS DES SITES WEB DES PRATICIENS DE L’ART DENTAIRE / STRATEGIES OF POSITIVE DISCOURSE CONSTRUCTION. THE CASE OF DENTAL ART PRACTICES WEBSITES
Abstract
In most cases, before choosing a dentist and request an appointment, the patient gets informed from relatives, friends, and acquaintances. Nowadays he also has the opportunity to make the choice by consulting websites or Facebook pages of dentists. The trust is outlined prior to the meeting itself, before stepping into the cabinet. For good visibility, for attracting and retaining a greater number of patients, for an effective communication with patients as well as for gaining their trust, many dentists have decided to create their websites so as to present the cabinet and their services on the Internet. Moreover, their mere presence on the Internet gives authority and gives the impression of strong, well-prepared, modern and open personalities. If the speech they build manages to calm the fears and anxieties of the patient, if the tone is warm and close to the patient, if the site is attractive, not only informative, the patient will be convinced of the qualities and competence of the doctor and his team, of the fact that they will benefit of quality treatment in a pleasant and modern environment. We consulted numerous sites from different cultural environments – French, Italian and Romanian and, given the size of this paper, we presented the theme construction of the discourse in three of them, from the perspective of the French School of discourse analysis. In our view, the theme construction gives clues on how the organization shapes its identity, being a collective discursive construction. We examined what information was selected to be presented, the way they are organized and prioritized, the layout, titration, the text – photo / audio-visual documents relation. Each and every time we found the concern to provide information and explanations, the focus on some keywords (quality, accuracy, competence, experience, performance, innovation), the constant presence of the word “smile” in the discourse, an important number of images, building a speech steeped with trademarks of subjectivity and the preference for certain isotopes. All these rhetorical strategies contribute to a positive attitude towards the dentist and dental treatments.
