A Comparative Study Of Ideational Meaning Of Doctor’s Discourse With Different Degrees Of Patient Satisfaction

As an institutional discourse,doctor-patient interaction has its modes and features.At present,studies of doctor-patient interaction at home and abroad are mainly conducted from the perspectives of pragmatics,conversational analysis,sociolinguistics,and systemic functional linguistics.In systemic functional linguistics,researchers mainly studied doctor-patient discourse from the aspects of context,stratification,instantiation,metafunctions,and generic structure.However,there are few comparative types of research of ideational meaning and studies of the combination of ideational meaning and generic structure in doctor’s discourse.Therefore,this thesis,based on the ideational meaning realized by transitivity process in systemic functional grammar and generic structure potential,combining quantitative and qualitative analysis,tries to probe into 1)What are the differences of transitivity processes employment by doctors with higher patient satisfaction and those with lower patient satisfaction? 2)How are the transitivity processes differently distributed in generic structures in the doctors’ discourse with higher patient satisfaction and those with lower patient satisfaction?The results show that: 1)in the employment of transitivity process,relational process and material process are the most frequently used process types in both types of doctor’s discourse,followed by mental process and existential process.The findings correspond to the features of doctor-patient interaction,describing diseases,telling patients what to do,or putting forward their treatments.As to the differences,the verbal process is the least in doctor’s discourse with higher patient satisfaction while the behavioral process is the least in doctor’s discourse with lower patient satisfaction,which indicates that doctor could make the patient feel the empathy and responsibility by employing the behavioral process so that doctor-patient could be closer;2)As to participants,the Attribute is the most in doctor’s discourse with higher patient satisfaction,which reveals that doctor frequently explains the symptoms or characteristics of the disease to the patient from an objective and professional perspective.By contrast,the Goal is the most in doctor’s discourse with lower patient satisfaction,which shows that doctor stresses his authority and tells the patient what should he do during interaction;3)Concerning circumstantial elements,Location and Extent are the most frequently used ones in both types of doctors which are the typical features of doctor-patient interaction,getting information about the disease from the patients as to the time,location,or the degree of being sick.The difference is shown in the third place.In doctor’s discourse with higher patient satisfaction,the Accompaniment is used more often,while Manner is employed more often in doctor’s discourse with lower patient satisfaction.As to the combination of process type use and generic structure,the results show that in the Exploration of condition stage,the relational process is the most in doctor’s discourse with higher patient satisfaction while the material process is the most in doctor’s discourse with lower patient satisfaction,which states that doctor could try to use more relational process to know more about patient’s disease in the process of inquiry.The similarities are found in the following three stages for both types of doctors.In the Diagnostic stage,the relational process is the most,showing doctors as a whole have rich medical knowledge and give an objective diagnosis in this stage.In the Treatment stage and Disposition stage,the material process is the most in these two types of doctor’s discourse,indicating that the main objective in these two stages is to offer treatment plans and solve problems for patients.