Expressing Uncertainty with Conditionals in Medical Discourse: A Comparison Across Genres

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the forms and functions of conditional construction in Chinese medical interactions, in terms of genres. Indefiniteness and uncertainty are ubiquitous in the medical realm; therefore, medical specialists tend to employ if-conditionals to qualify their commitment to the truthfulness of the propositions, as the inherent non-assertiveness of conditional clauses enables speakers/writers to hedge, hypothesize, and manage interactions with their audience/readers and simultaneously modify degrees of commitment to their propositions. The results demonstrate that the if-clause + consequence clause is the prototypical pattern of conditionals in Chinese. Forty-three conditional connectors are identified in spoken discourse, whereas ten are found in written discourse. The speakers prefer ruguo 如果 to initiate Chinese if-conditionals, while the writers favor monosyllabic ruo 若. Conditionals serve different communicative purposes in the physician-to-physician discourse: 12 functions are observed in either speaking or writing, respectively, with nine of them shared by both genres and the other three identified exclusively in the respective genre. To meet the communication-oriented goal of foreign language teaching, three pedagogical applications that are beneficial for both Chinese language instructors and learners are generalized and discussed.