A DISCOURSE ANALYSIS ON RHETORICAL MOVES IN HOSPITAL CORRESPONDENCE: PUBLIC ASSISTANCE AND COMPLAINTS COMMUNICATIONS IN FOCUS

Rhetorical Move Analysis can be employed to examine the purpose and structure of written texts as well as the ways in which such purposes are attained. This procedure, typically famous for its utility in academic and professional texts, examines the kind of independent moves or sections within a text as well as their rhetorical purposes while conveying a message. Consequently, Thomson and Kamler (2016) investigated rhetorical moves applicable in most workplace correspondence especially in the hospital setting. With complaints letter in mind, these are normally regarded as official complaints of dissatisfaction with service obtained from the healthcare workers. This usually arises from interaction and communication with service providers (Montini et al., 2008 cited by Skär & Söderberg, 2018). A recent study by Barnhoorn et al. (2021) found that patients are dissatisfied and complaints are active in primary healthcare environments. In return, healthcare workers also experience challenges managing patient complaints due to it being unclear, necessitating better approaches to effectively address and provide resolutions. Most of these letters from clients are not well structured and do not adequately state the problem with proper introduction, explanation, and detail of the expectation of actions and results. These, resting with little concern for appropriate structure and direction, do not serve their purposes and intents well (Formpl, 2024).