CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF MEDICAL COMMUNICATION IN NORTH CENTRAL, NIGERIA

This study explores the role of language in medical communication through the lens of CDA. This study investigates how power, ideology, and institutional authority are constructed and maintained in doctor–patient interactions and public health messaging. Drawing on Fairclough’s three-dimensional model and van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach, the study analyses medical professionals and institutions’ discursive strategies to control, persuade, and influence patients and the public. CDA is used to study medical communication in North Central Nigeria by, examining how language reflects, creates, and challenges power dynamics and social structures within doctor-patient interactions and public health messages. Research has explored how language use in rural Nigerian hospitals reveals social dominance between doctors and patients and how discourse is used by public health campaigns to build public trust and convey crucial health information. The analysis focuses on how language in medical communication reflects and promotes specific ideologies and social beliefs, and language patterns, including lexical choices, speech roles, and grammatical structures used to establish meaning and power. The goal of this study is to explain how medical communication contributes to or challenges societal structures, such as unequal power relationships or dominant health ideologies