Discordant definitions of medical terminology and their impact on communication between English-speaking doctors and Xhosa-speaking parents at a paediatric hospital

Levin, Michael

Discordant definitions of medical terminology and their impact on communication between English-speaking doctors and Xhosa-speaking parents at a paediatric hospital

Thesis / Dissertation

2005

Abstract

[page 312 missing] This thesis falls into the broad area of applied linguistics, in the field of medical communication. The central problem which I investigate is the imperfect communication that takes place between largely English-speaking doctors and largely Xhosa-speaking parents. Some of the problems result from lack of bilingualism or asymmetrical bilingualism; however, even if bilingualism were to be achieved, communication difficulties might still persist in relation to what I call discordant terminology between the two languages.

Keywords

Linguistics

Reference:

Collections

PhD / Doctoral

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