Does pragmatics matter? Migrant doctors' perceptions of conflict talk: The case of Chile and Hong Kong

Abstract

The cultural diversity that characterises today's healthcare institutions poses the challenge of exploring an array of communicative scenarios in order to address culturally-sensitive issues that may help improve workplace performance. Partly due to the accelerated processes of globalisation and to the world financial crisis, professional mobility around the world among healthcare workers has been on increase in the last couple of decades (e.g. Horner and Weber, 2008; Harvey et al., 2004; El Mercurio Blogs, 14 March 2015). This paper examines the issue of professional mobility in the contexts of Chile and Hong Kong. In both countries professional mobility has been driven, on the one hand, by healthcare workers searching improved wages, better job opportunities and social security due to economic stability and growth of the host countries. On the other hand, professional mobility has been prompted by health care organizations actively developing recruitment strategies that aim to address the issue of inadequate supply of health professionals. The process of overseas relocation and adjustment is not without hurdles though. For example, both countries have introduced stringent requirements that include a licensing exam and a period of ‘re-training’ or internship in order for foreign medical graduates to practice medicine. In the context of such current world-wide migration waves, cultural diversity is becoming increasingly more important in the workplace because it presents migrant doctors with the challenge of adjusting to the host culture and local workers with the challenge of embracing new foreign cultures. Because of the high stakes involved in medical practice, an important aspect of transitioning into a new culture is how doctors manage conflict situations through talk. Taking a discourse analytic perspective, in this paper we explore conflict talk among migrant and local healthcare workers. In Chile migrant healthcare professionals come predominantly from other Latin American countries; however, in spite of speaking the same language (i.e. Spanish) as local healthcare professionals, they belong to very different cultural groups. In Hong Kong migrant healthcare professionals originate from various countries around the world (e.g. in South East Asia, Europe, Australia, etc.) and the cultural diversity is further exacerbated by linguistic diversity with the vast majority of the Hong Kong population speaking Cantonese as their first language. By drawing on autobiographical interviews and a survey on conflict talk in public healthcare institutions, this paper shows the levels of transitions undergone by foreign doctors in an exploration of the pragmatic aspects at play as doctors manage conflict talk, namely, the preference for direct and indirect talk. Reporting on an ongoing study carried out in both Chile and Hong Kong, the paper discusses how relevant direct and indirect talk are in intercultural communication and what impact they have on professional practice as perceived by migrant doctors.