The present study aims at examining the structure of pediatrist-patient clinical interview, linguistic devices adopted by the participants, as well as problems found during the conversation. The data includes 50 interviews from 5 pediatrists. It is found that the pediatrist-patient clinical interview consists of 6 components. That is, greeting, interviewing and diagnosing, explaning the patient’s condition, explaining the treatment, pre-closing and closing. The components are arranged in the same order. The study also reveals that the pediatrists and the patients's parents adopt several devices to achieve their end. Ten devices adopted by the pediatrists to communicate with the patients are choosing the final particle for politeness according to the patients's sex, using kin terms, using child language, using onomatopoeia, providing choices to answer, making a request, praising, using a condition statement, giving examples and giving reasons. As for communicating with the parents, the pediatrists adopt 9 devices. That is, providing choices to answer, using a statement for asking, repeating the answer, using words which mean “normal" or "not serious", saying /maypenray/, giving examples, being orderly, using rhetorical questions and avoiding technical terms. The parents, on the other hand, use 4 devices. That is, being more informative than required, exaggerating, using interrogative forms for politeness and using pre-request for information. Even though the pediatrists and the parents try to be cooperative in achieving their end, some problems are found during the communication. The problems are due to the devices they adopt. The parents do not seem to give sufficient information from the pediatrists's point of view. The parents sometimes do not get sufficient information due to their intervening the pediatrist's turn. For the problems with the patients, they are due to the patients's competence and uncooperation.
