Language and the Parameters of Power in Medical Discourse in Spoken Egyptian Arabic

Abstract

The present study is an investigation of the parameters of power following in medical encounters in spoken Egyptian Arabic. The analysis will focus on the aspects of discourse: speech acts especially directives such as questions, orders and commands, features related to turn taking like different types of overlap, adjacency pairs and the concept of preference, Grice's concept of implicature and the politeness theory with its strategies for Face Threatening Acts. The study aims at drawing conclusions concerning power and ways of claiming it in Egyptian Arabic medical encounters. Thus, the study differs from previous studies not only in investigating the Arabic language but also in the aspects of analysis, which has not been examined before because each of the previous studies concentrates on only one aspect of analysis.