Holby City

Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lv5Aep0WFg

To what extent does the represented language of medical drama reflect real language used in this kind of workplace, or language in the workplace more generally?

This clip is based around a operation taking place on a patient who had been rushed into hospital. The language used in the hospital by the surgeon’s does not fully represent the jargon stereotypically associated with hospitals. There is some evidence in this clip which supports LINC’s theory in 1898 - 1992, but there are also some aspects which are disproven.

The conversation begins with one surgeon confronting another about their mother’s ‘love life’ which is an example of social talk rather than them discussing the operation they are carrying out. During the middle of the clip, there is a slight reference to the procedure after one surgeon said ‘’remember what we are here for’’, and the conversation was based around the patient. The conversation is quite general and friendly whilst discussing their social lives but becomes more complex when discussing the operation they are carrying out. This supports the idea that equality in the dialogue between participants tends to produce less predictable content and turn taking as well as more interruptions as the content discussed at the start of the clip was mainly about their social lives which would have been unexpected for a surgeon to be discussing that, particularly as it was during a difficult procedure. Whilst discussing the procedure, there is rare interruption but when talking about their social lives, some surgeons cut other people off.

At one point in the middle of the clip, the surgeon’s start talking about what they are doing and using jargon such as ‘ there is a problem with the neurotic valve’, ‘powder please’, and ‘we may need to replace the ascending aorta’. This supports the idea that in hospitals the language used is technical and that this technical vocabulary binds its users together. It can be quite difficult to understand what the surgeons are saying as they are using more technical terms which would regularly be used in hospitals making It  hard for those who are not part of that specific discourse community. I think that the language used in hospitals or other related workplaces is often quite general and the conversations they have are usually about the surgery itself or about their social lives. In some cases the conversations are relaxed whilst in others it can be more stressful.