Abstract
Doctor-patient interaction has gained increasing attention among sociologists and linguists during the last few decades. The problem with the studies performed so far, however, has been a lack of a theoretical framework which could bring together the various phenomena observed within medical consultations. Mikhail Bakhtin's philosophy of language offers us tools for studying medical practice as socio-cultural semiotic phenomenon. Applying Bakhtin's ideas of polyphonic, context-dependent and open-ended nature of human communication opens the possibilities to develop prevailing theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of medical consultations.
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Puustinen, R. Bakhtin's Philosophy and Medical Practice — Toward a Semiotic Theory of Doctor — patient Interaction. Med Health Care Philos 2, 275–281 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009970712856
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009970712856