Medical consultation, British National Corpus, positive politeness

The paper offers partial results of a long-term project aimed at the inquiry into the field of medical consulting. The primary goal of the project is to search for communicative strategies of doctors and patients that can convey empathy and trust. Via an interdisciplinary analysis, based on the data excerpted from the most recent edition of the British National Corpus (2007), the author brings quantitative and qualitative evidence that doctor-patient interaction has undergone significant modifications, resulting in a social redefinition of the originally asymmetrical roles of the main protagonists. The present paper draws attention to those communicative practices of doctors and patients that are related to the manifestation of positive politeness.