ABSTRACT
Respect for the autonomy of participants has changed clinical encounters radically in the last 50 years, but the implications of this change are still being worked out in practice. By no means all consultations are perceived as at all easy by either side. Observation suggests that clinicians still fail to use ordinary polite speech at appropriate times, and this linguistic poverty may have a negative effect that is practically and morally important. I examine the claim that ordinary speech may be a marker of behaviour that can be transformative and reminds us of obligations beyond the clinical.
