Co-operation in the Language of Selected Medical Reports in Nigeria.pdf

Medical case notes (MCNs), like other forms of medical discourse provide information on a patient’s health condition and its treatment. However, previous studies on medical discourse have focused more on doctor – patient interaction than on doctor’s written communication, predominant of which is the medical case notes (MCNs). This study therefore, examined the exploration of co-operation in selected MCNs with a view to establishing the observance and non-observance of the conversational maxims; and the implicit meanings in MCNs. The study adopted the Gricean theoretical notion of implicature as its theoretical framework. Twenty medical case notes were purposively sampled from five privately owned hospitals in Ibadan and subjected to pragmatic analysis. The study revealed that the way language is employed by medical practitioners does not reflect an indiscriminate deployment of linguistic resources, but deliberate discursive practices that have definable shapes and implications for the profession. Our findings also showed that conversational maxims were both flouted and obeyed in the selected medical case notes. The study further observed that the recovery of implicatures was based on the non-observance of some maxims. A study of implicatures in medical case notes should assist in understanding medical discourse, and aid access to the intended meaning of the writer vis-à-vis the overall interpretation of the text. For adequate understanding of these texts by other medical personnel or any other authorized body, the study recommended the utilisation of contextual features in the interpretation of MCNs. Key words: Medical case notes, co-operative principle, implicatures, information and health