The series Trends in Applied Linguistics meets the challenges of the rapidly growing field of applied linguistics. In a very broad sense, applied linguistics is understoodby focusing on the application of theoretical linguistics to current problems arising in different contexts of human society. Given the interdisciplinary character of applied linguistics, the series includes cognitive, psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic and educational perspectives.
The following topicsare included in the series:
- Second language acquisition and the acquisition of additional languages
- Bilingual and multilingual education
- Language planning and language policy
- Literacy skills
- Second/foreign language pedagogy
- Translation and interpretation
- Language for specific purposes
- Discourse analysis
- Language testing and assessment
- Child language
- Language and gender
- Pragmatics and rhetorics
- Corpus analysis
- Critical pedagogies
- Research methodology in applied linguistics
- Language and technology
Researchers in applied linguistics have found medical and health contexts to be fertile grounds for study, from macro-levels of conceptual analyses to micro-levels of the "turn-by-turn." The rich array of health contexts include medical research itself, clinical encounters, medical education and training, caregivers and patients in everyday life from the formal and ritualized to the ad hoc and ephemeral.
This volume foregrounds the crucial role of applied linguists addressing real world problems, while simultaneously highlighting the varied ways that health can be understood as a rich site of language inquiry in its own right. Chapters cover a range of health topics including medical training, medical interaction, disability in education, health policy analysis and recommendations, multidisciplinary research teams, and medical ethics. While reporting and reflecting on their specific topics in clinical and health contexts, contributors also articulate their own hybrid identities as professional collaborators in health research, education, and policy.
