Päivitetty 28.3.2002  ?  Palautteet

Virittäjä-lehti  >  Hakemistot  >  Kirjoitukset ja tiivistelmät: 1/2002 (106)

PLAYING DOCTOR AND PATIENT: HOW INSTITUTIONAL ROLES ARE EXPRESSED IN A CHILDREN'S GAME

Using observations from a children's game in which the children play at being doctor and patient, the writer examines how children learn the interactive behaviour and language typical of a doctor's surgery. These pragmatic skills are examined on the one hand at the micro level, focusing on how children produce role registers, for example by selecting phonological and morphological features, and on the other hand at the situational level, looking at how the surgery behaviour is reflected in the children's game, specifically the elements which constitute the doctor's consultation.

Children's role-playing games reflect the stereotypes found in society. Stereotyping in the doctor-and-patient games is evident in the form of an emphasis on institutional roles and the presence of an asymmetrical relationship between doctor and patient: the patient and the doctor have
different rights and duties in the games. The doctor is entitled to ask questions, give orders and make diagnoses, whereas the patient¹s job is to answer the doctor's questions and obey the doctor's orders.

Although the games reflect stereotypes rather than real situations, the micro-level analysis reveals that the children know how to make varied use of different interactive means. When explaining the results of tests, for example, the child playing the doctor often resorts to the same strategies that a real doctor would use. For instance, the child will often soften bad news by using verbs that play down the facts and their reliability. In other respects too, the children establish role registers in the games very skilfully. They distinguish, for example, the speech of the role they are playing from other speech, for instance by using standard forms of language, medical words and particular speech patterns. A very prominent feature of the games is their emphasis on action.

Whereas in genuine surgery situations the doctor attempts initially to get acquainted with the patient and to establish a mood of confidentiality, in the children's games the child playing the doctor will often begin the surgery by carrying out a physical examination of the patient directly, without asking the background or the reasons for the complaint, and without getting to know the patient. The writer also notes that the games contain surprisingly little mayhem or humour. Moreover, the children behave contrary to their roles as patients only to a limited extent.

The material consists of 45 doctor-and-patient games recorded on videotape, collected at an afternoon childcare centre in Helsinki. The informants are 19 children (15 girls and 4 boys), all between 6 and 10 years old. The research method used is principally ethnomethdological conversation analysis.

Eveliina Korpela