Hanne Sæderup Pedersen

Primary fields of research

Linguistic research

Narrative analysis and narrative genres in spoken language

Stylistics and corpus stylistics

Health care communication 

Discourse analysis

Spoken language 

Current research

PhD project: Talking about depression: GPs' and psychiatrists' representations of patients - speech and thought presentation in narrative speech genres. 

Short presentation

My PhD thesis with the working title “Talking about depression – GPs’ and psychiatrists’ representations of patients” forms part of the interdisciplinary research project “Understandings of depression among general practitioners and psychiatrists”. The objective of the wider research project is to investigate understandings of depression and patients with depression as expressed by general practitioners and psychiatrists, respectively, contributing to illuminating barriers and opportunities for the alignment of patient treatment in the Danish healthcare system. Members of the research group are Associate Professor Annette Davidsen from The Research Unit for General Practice, and Associate Professor Christina Fogtmann Fosgerau from the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, both University of Copenhagen.

In my PhD thesis, I investigate general practitioners’ and psychiatrists’ representations of patients with depression by looking at how narrative speech genres and speech and thought presentation are employed as narrative strategies in semi-structured one-on-one interviews. I pose questions such as “How do general practitioners and psychiatrists use speech and thought presentation in narrative speech genres to construct patient identities?” and “How can narrative speech genres be combined with a speech and thought presentation framework from stylistics?” The project takes its point of departure in William Labov’s concept of the oral narrative of personal experience and the stylisticians Leech & Short’s continuum-based speech and thought presentation framework.