Trustworthiness construction in Chinese village doctor-elderly patient interactions

While studies on the trustworthiness construction are increasing, the trustworthiness construction in doctor-elderly patient interactions is still under-researched. Moreover, scant attention has been paid to doctor-elderly patient interactions in Chinese village contexts. The present study investigates village doctors’ discursive strategies of trustworthiness construction by focusing on 50 cases in two villages in Zhejiang Province, China. The findings reveal that village doctors’ trustworthiness discourse can be categorized into two types: authoritative discourse and attitudinal discourse, with the former primarily realized by medical jargon, medical history narrative, normality judgement, corrections of mistaken beliefs, exhortations on behaviors, and warnings; and the latter by benevolence, integrity, attentiveness, nonmedical small talk, kinship address terms, humor, and health literacy adaptation. The study also offers culturally bound discussions to reveal the underlying factors of trustworthiness construction, which may arouse attention to the medical service needs of elderly patients, especially those in rural areas.