A study of closings in nurse-elderly resident consultations at a mobile integrative health centre

Abstract

The study examines the genre of nurse-elderly resident consultations in Hong Kong to find out how the closings of their interactions are structured; specifically, it aims to ascertain the extent to which the patterns of closings conform to the canonical closing, or archetype closing, identified in telephone calls and conversations in American English. The study also compares how frequently the nurse and the elderly resident initiate different patterns of closings, and examines suspension or delay of a closing in the medical consultations. Not only the patterns of closings, but also in what way important meanings are negotiated by the two groups of interacting speakers over a small number of turns, ranging from one to four, have been investigated. Findings show that the closing structure and relative frequencies of closings are genre-specific, dependent on such factors as institutional roles and communicative goals, conversational contexts, and relationships of the speakers.