International Worker Patients’ Directive Speech Acts in Intercultural Consultations

Abstract

The present study investigated international worker patients’ English directive speech acts in their intercultural consultations with domestic doctors at three institutions in the Republic of Korea. Special attention was paid to the patient-initiated directives at the treatment or advice phase and to the discursive links that they triggered. The factors considered included the overall process across the individual sessions, the diachronic continuity (or lack thereof) of the sessions, and the intertextuality or intratextuality of the links as well as the directness of the speech act in question. Close qualitative analysis led to the identification of (at least) four discursive links that the patients’ directives triggered: ㆍDirect directives that trigger a link to all sessions in general ㆍDirect directives that trigger a link only to the immediate follow-up session ㆍNon-direct directives that trigger a link to a discourse unrelated to the current session ㆍNon-direct directives that trigger both intertextual and intratextual links simultaneously Each was closely compared and contrasted to each other and to those in Černý’s (2007, 2017) intracultural consultations. Discussions and limitations were also discussed.