ABSTRACT
This chapter analysis the number of turns suggests turn-taking is roughly equal between the oncologist and the patient. The development of oncology practice management, psycho-oncology and palliative oncology as interdisciplinary fields of study and the introduction of palliative medicine into oncological care show the complexity and the diversity of the competing demands on the oncologist. The medical oncologist's role in advanced cancer care, as we tried to show in this chapter, is multifaceted and complex and is the function of choices from various interwoven contextual elements and their textual realizations. A particular set of values for the field, tenor and mode determines a functional variety of language or a 'register', for example the 'medical consultation' register or, more delicately, the 'oncology consultation' register. A diverse range of roles, and their textual realizations, have been documented through the analysis of tenor, corresponding to the characteristics of oncology as a field.
