Locutions in medical discourse in Southwestern Nigeria

The paper examines the pragmatic roles that locutionary acts play in understanding the communication between doctors & patients in Southwestern Nigeria. Working within John Austin's locutionary acts, with restrictions to the lexical occurrences & lexical relationships observed in the discourse, it got data through tape recordings of doctor-patient conversations & interviews of both doctors & patients (&/or their relations).The findings revealed that two categories of locutions were engaged in hospital interactions, namely, locutions intended to be understood by non-professionals & locutions not intended to be understood by non-professionals. The paper observes that locutions in medical discourse in Southwestern Nigeria bring standard lexical choices & local linguistic initiatives of medical practitioners into a pragmatic union. It therefore concludes that the pragmatic engagement of these choices displays the tact the practitioners use in dealing with patients, & it recommends the need for the practitioners to master the locutions & their pragmatic adaptation for effective management of patients. 73 References. Adapted from the source document