Abstract:Medical discourse is a special type of discourse that occurs between the healer and the patient in medical situations. This paper examined the medical discourse under two different settings—the school clinics and the municipal hospitals—between doctors and patients. By analyzing the language features of conversations recorded under each setting and making a comparison of them in the qualitative way—by studying three contextualization cues, including minimal responses, turn-taking and stressed syllables, this paper came to the conclusion that though doctors under both settings still control a large proportion of the communication process, doctors in municipal hospitals adopted a more patient-friendly way of communication.