{"title":"Delivering reassurance in online medical consultations: The stance marker Hao-bu-hao (HBH) in spoken Chinese","authors":"Ying Jin , Dennis Tay","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.01.011","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article examines doctors' delivery of reassurance in online medical consultations. It focuses on the Mandarin <em>A-not-A</em> structure <em>hao-bu-hao</em> (<em>HBH</em>), equivalent to “alright” in English, and observes how it contribute to the delivery of reassurance. Data include typed texts and audio recordings. Using conversation analysis, we differentiate two environments where HBH is used: in delivering a no-problem diagnosis and an optimistic prognosis in the context of bad news. We argue that HBH allows the doctor to maintain control over the interaction while appearing less directive by acknowledging the patient's contingency without genuinely seeking their input.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"238 ","pages":"Pages 4-18"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8000,"publicationDate":"2025-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Pragmatics","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378216625000116","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article examines doctors' delivery of reassurance in online medical consultations. It focuses on the Mandarin A-not-A structure hao-bu-hao (HBH), equivalent to “alright” in English, and observes how it contribute to the delivery of reassurance. Data include typed texts and audio recordings. Using conversation analysis, we differentiate two environments where HBH is used: in delivering a no-problem diagnosis and an optimistic prognosis in the context of bad news. We argue that HBH allows the doctor to maintain control over the interaction while appearing less directive by acknowledging the patient's contingency without genuinely seeking their input.
期刊介绍：
Since 1977, the Journal of Pragmatics has provided a forum for bringing together a wide range of research in pragmatics, including cognitive pragmatics, corpus pragmatics, experimental pragmatics, historical pragmatics, interpersonal pragmatics, multimodal pragmatics, sociopragmatics, theoretical pragmatics and related fields. Our aim is to publish innovative pragmatic scholarship from all perspectives, which contributes to theories of how speakers produce and interpret language in different contexts drawing on attested data from a wide range of languages/cultures in different parts of the world. The Journal of Pragmatics also encourages work that uses attested language data to explore the relationship between pragmatics and neighbouring research areas such as semantics, discourse analysis, conversation analysis and ethnomethodology, interactional linguistics, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, media studies, psychology, sociology, and the philosophy of language. Alongside full-length articles, discussion notes and book reviews, the journal welcomes proposals for high quality special issues in all areas of pragmatics which make a significant contribution to a topical or developing area at the cutting-edge of research.
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