Humour as expression of empathy and conflict in medical communication

The article deals with the issues of effective verbal interaction in oral medical discourse with professional communicative tactics and slang as principal conditions. In the light of empathy is the role of humour is identified as conducive to establishing «specialist–nonspesialist» confidential relations. On the other hand, humorous components participate in slang’s word-formation, which has its own benefits among «Friends», but would not work among «Foes» due to possible conflict caused by misunderstanding.