Routledge Studies in Language, Health and Culture
About the Book Series
This series has several distinctive features. First, it investigates health communication through linguistic lenses. The contributions to the series in the form of research monographs or targeted edited volumes will introduce the readers to a range of linguistic approaches, including, but not limited to (critical) discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, multimodal analysis, corpus analysis, conversation analysis, etc. Second, what will bring these versatile approaches together in the series is that they will draw on authentic empirical data from a range of healthcare contexts (e.g. acute care, traditional medicine, secondary care), going beyond the traditional doctor-patient encounters and expanding the focus of inquiry to online healthcare provision, interprofessional communication, etc.
Second, the series focuses specifically on contexts outside of the mainstream English-dominant healthcare contexts. The series solicits proposals from contributors working on healthcare communication in Asia-Pacific, South America, continental Europe, etc., putting to the forefront the growing body of research representing versatile sociocultural and linguistic contexts.
Third, it is expected that some contributions will focus on multicultural and multilingual healthcare encounters, thus making the series of relevance to a broad readership around the world.
In line with some of the core principles of linguistic research in healthcare contexts, the series will encourage contributions that, in addition to advancing the linguistic field, will also stress relevance to professional practice (Sarangi and Candlin, 2011). The editor will invite, where appropriate, healthcare and medical professionals in a relevant field to critically review and endorse, or to write a short foreword to the contributions. This feature will encourage a trans-disciplinary dialogue between linguistic and health communication scholars and healthcare and medical professionals, thus increasing the potential readership.
Genetic Literacy in Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing: A Discursive Approach to Public Engagement with Genetic Science
1st Edition
By Zhengpeng Luo
December 05, 2025
This book examines language and communication in a novel area of digital health. Situating itself within the sociocultural paradigm of literacy research, the book proposes a discourse-oriented approach to genetic literacy and applies it to the study of public engagement with direct-to-consumer (DTC...
Health Crisis Communication: Multimodal Classification for Pandemic Preparedness
1st Edition
By Sheng-Hsun Lee
July 24, 2025
Sheng- Hsun Lee develops a new way of understanding public health crisis communication through the lens of multimodal classification. He draws on examples from COVID- 19 press conferences in Taiwan and public online comments to outline multimodal classification as sorting pandemic phenomena into ...
Registerial Expertise in Traditional Chinese Medical Translation
1st Edition
By Yan Yue
March 31, 2025
Yue’s book explores the nature of translation using traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and the TCM classic Huangdi Neijing and its various translations. Yue examines in great detail and depth the important factors that cause the differences in the translators’ treatment of language indeterminacies....
Language, Health and Culture: Problematizing the Centers and Peripheries of Healthcare Communication Research
1st Edition
Edited
By Olga Zayts-Spence, Susan M. Bridges
December 18, 2024
Language, Health and Culture brings together contributions by linguistic scholars working in the area of health communication in Asia—in particular, in Hong Kong, Mainland China, Singapore, Japan and Taiwan. Olga Zayts-Spence and Susan M. Bridges, along with the contributors, draw on a diverse ...
The Role of Language in Eastern and Western Health Communication
1st Edition
By Jack Pun
November 28, 2024
Jack Pun’s book offers the latest research in a variety of health communication settings to highlight the cultural differences between the East and the West. It focuses on the various clinical strands in health communication such as doctor-patient interactions, nurse handover, and ...
The Social Nature of Antibiotic Overprescription in China: Medical Conversations, Doctor–Patient Relationships, and Decision-Making
1st Edition
By Nan Christine Wang
May 23, 2024
Offering a rarely seen glimpse into the realities of one of the biggest global public health crises in modern time, Wang’s book focuses on doctor–patient interactions in China to demonstrate the potential effects of health communication, doctor–patient relationship, and a matrix of social factors ...
Doctor–patient Communication in Chinese and Western Medicine
1st Edition
By Ying Jin
January 29, 2024
Drawing on naturally occurring doctor– patient conversations in real- life medical consultations, this book analyzes the similarities and differences in doctor– patient communication and patient satisfaction between traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Western medicine (WM) practiced in China. ...