The Study on the Doctor's Identity Construction in Doctor-Patient Conversation from the Perspective of Interpersonal Function and Interpersonal Pragmatics

Based on the doctor-patient interaction corpus of the American TV series House M.D. (Season 1), this thesis analyzes the identity construction of doctors in the doctor-patient conversation from the perspective of interpersonal pragmatics, combined with the interpersonal function in systemic functional linguistics, in order to reveal the significance and mechanism of multiple identity construction. The author classifies the identity of doctors in medical process into three categories by collecting, classifying and analyzing the data of TV series. The first one is the authority identity, which is constructed by using technical terms, modal verbs or the imperative mood. The second is the friend identity, which is constructed by chatting with the patient easily or addressing the patient more closely. The third category is the listener identity, and its construction mainly through repetition or approval of the patient’s attitude. This study finds that by constructing multiple identities, doctors can meet the diverse needs of patients and ease the relationship between doctors and patients. Under the medical background, the mechanism of the construction of doctor's discourse identity can be explained from the principle of interpersonal pragmatics in the identity construction, including the Social Constructivism Principle, the Positionality Principle, the Relationality Principle and the Indexicality Principle.