On page 246, Erard states "doctors add words like "well," "anyway," and "now" when giving previously published remarks at medical conferences. Even though these disfluencies are planned in order to seem more approachable, this fact still unnerves me. I guess I go along with most of the mainstream US by automatically judging people (without knowing I'm doing it) as being somewhat less intelligent. This isn't a quality I would like in my doctor. So I guess my question is where to draw the line when determining when to be professional and when to be personable? If being given a diagnosis by my doctor, I don't want to hear the words "uh" and "um" being uttered from his mouth, or I would probably seek a second opinion. But if he were to speak to me without any disfluencies, in a somewhat robotic, and unnatural way, he would seem cold, and I wouldn't like that either. I guess I'm just baffled on how we balance the two extremes.
Comments (1)
I don't really think that it is such a bad thing for doctors to use disfluencies when speaking with a patient. I think they first of all have to search through a great deal of information in order to properly diagnose someone. This could be a possible area in which they need to use disfluencies in order to make sure they choose the correct terminology. Another problem they face is trying to describe what the problem is. Many people do not understand the scientific names for injuries, diseases, etc. So they doctors must try to explain the problem in a more understandable way. This would also be an area where pause fillers could creep into speech. Doctors must think about how they are going to say something so that their patient understands it, which would create some times where they would need to stop and think about what they are saying. So I really think that when doctors use pause fillers it's not because they aren't intelligent, but because there is a lot of information they need to process in order for their patient to understand them.
Posted by Andy Fleming | February 22, 2008 4:59 PM
Posted on February 22, 2008 16:59