Discourse-Pragmatic Functions of Modal Auxiliary Verbs of English in Doctor-Patient Verbal Interactions at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria

Abstract: Doctor-patient interactions in hospitals constitute a communicative situation in which doctors strive to identify and understand their patients’ medical needs through dialoguing in order to offer effective diagnosis and treatment. Previous scholarly works on the problems of communication between doctors and patients, particularly from linguistic and pragmatic perspectives, have examined communicative styles and such phenomena as speech acts, conversational maxims, (im)politeness, questions of power and discourse devices that lead to good or bad effects, with little attention paid to the communicative potentials of linguistic modality. This study, therefore, explored the discourse-pragmatic functions of English modal auxiliary verbs (may, would, can, could, etc.) in doctor-patient interactions at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria, in order to determine the communicative value of linguistic modality for further understanding of doctor-patient clinical interactions. Schneider et al.’s pragmatic model and Sack et al’s conversation analysis complemented by M.A.K. Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar were adopted as theoretical and methodological frameworks. Recorded data on clinical interactions involving five doctors and twenty patients were purposively sampled and subjected to discourse-pragmatic analysis. Beyond their conventional functions, modal auxiliary verbs performed a range of context-dependent variety of pragmatic functions: doctors’ epistemic and authoritative certainty, obligation, clarification, advice, etc. Modality allowed the interlocutors to negotiate multiple interactional and interpersonal meanings. Might, maybe, can, cannot, should expressed certainty/uncertainty, impropriety, ineligibility, promise, and command, respectively.  Thus, modal auxiliary verbs of English constitute a remarkable discourse tool, performing significant pragmatic functions capable of enhancing doctor-patient clinical interactions and communication in the Nigerian context.