Perspectives On Medical English As A Lingua Franca

This edited volume brings together diverse international perspectives on the growing worldwide phenomenon of Medical English as a lingua franca, where speakers of other first languages use English as a vehicle for medical communication. A subset of the larger field of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), only a handful of studies of healthcare ELF communication have been published previously, despite its global expansion and potential impacts upon quality healthcare and patient safety. This book is inherently interdisciplinary nature, intersecting fields such as applied linguistics, English langua.

This edited volume brings together diverse international perspectives on the growing worldwide phenomenon of Medical English as a lingua franca, where speakers of other first languages use English as a vehicle for medical communication. A subset of the larger field of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), only a handful of studies of healthcare ELF communication have been published previously, despite its global expansion and potential impacts upon quality healthcare and patient safety. This book is inherently interdisciplinary nature, intersecting fields such as applied linguistics, English language teaching, medical education, and healthcare communication. The contributors and their research settings represent multiple national and linguistic backgrounds, and bring perspectives from their professional lives as healthcare workers and educators, and as language teachers and researchers. This volume contributes to filling a gap at the intersection of ELF and healthcare communication, and thus represents an area of study accessible to a broad range of professionals from numerous disciplines, and one that can be of benefit to multiple stakeholders: researchers, educators, healthcare institutions, and practitioners, as well as patients and their family members. The topics discussed in these pages will be of importance to a wide audience of readers, since accurate communication is at the centre of quality healthcare delivery.

In this first book-length treatment of MELF, the authors assert that MELF represents an important contribution to our understanding of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), in that existing ELF research has been limited to relatively low stakes communicative situations, such as interactions in business, academia, internet blogging or casual conversations. Medical contexts, in contrast, often represent situations calling for exceptional communicative precision and urgency. Providing both evidence from their own research and analysis from (the limited number of) existing studies, the authors offer a counterpoint to the optimism regarding communicative success prevalent in ELF. The book proposes a theoretical perspective on how the various features of healthcare communication serve as important variables in shaping interaction among speakers of ELF, further enlarging our understanding of this emerging sub-field.

In this first book-length treatment of MELF, the authors assert that MELF represents an important contribution to our understanding of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), in that existing ELF research has been limited to relatively low stakes communicative situations, such as interactions in business, academia, internet blogging or casual conversations. Medical contexts, in contrast, often represent situations calling for exceptional communicative precision and urgency. Providing both evidence from their own research and analysis from (the limited number of) existing studies, the authors offer a counterpoint to the optimism regarding communicative success prevalent in ELF. The book proposes a theoretical perspective on how the various features of healthcare communication serve as important variables in shaping interaction among speakers of ELF, further enlarging our understanding of this emerging sub-field.

The rapid global spread of the English language has serious linguistic, ideological, socio-cultural, political, and pedagogical implications as it creates both positive interactions and negative tensions between global and local forces. Accordingly, debate about issues such as the native/non-native divide, the politics of an international language, communication in a Lingua Franca, the choice of a model for ELT, and the link between English and identity(ies) has stimulated scholarly inquiry in an unprecedented way. The chapters in this volume revisit, challenge, and expand upon established arguments and positions regarding the politics, policies, pedagogies, and practices of English as an international language, as well as its sociolinguistic and socio-psychological complexities.

This edited volume uniquely explores the extensive themes and frameworks of tourism development and investment in Bangladesh. The book focuses on outlining the present investment and development scenario of Bangladesh in order to suggest some solutions to current issues. Considering that Bangladesh has a population of over 170 million, the country possesses an abundance of possibilities for tourism. In recent years, Bangladesh has experienced steady growth in its economy and socio-cultural developments. Currently, there is very limited knowledge of or research into tourism in Bangladesh, even though it is a multifaceted and fast-growing industry. This book makes an important contribution to representing and exploring diverse aspects of tourism in Bangladesh for local and international benefit. This book provides insights into the stronghold of a social class having the ability to spend for tourism and leisure activities, which has prompted the country to pay further attention to the development of its tourism industry. This book emphasizes that the importance of tourism is undeniably on a continuous rise in Bangladesh, which in turn deserves the appropriate attention from academic research.

The analysis of academic genres and the use of corpus resources, methods and analytical tools are now central to a great deal of research into English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Both genre analysis and corpus investigations have revealed the patterning of academic texts, at the levels of lexicogrammar and discourse, and have led to richer understandings of the variations in such patterning between genres and between disciplines. The thirteen contributions included in this volume address issues in academic discourse studies from a range of perspectives: namely, corpus-based research into EAP at the lexicogrammatical and genre levels (Section 1); intercultural EAP research (Section 2); English as a Lingua Franca in academic communication (Section 3); and the relationships between corpus, genre and pedagogy in EAP, with an emphasis on implications and applications (Section 4). The collection is aimed primarily at teachers, students and researchers of EAP and applied corpus linguistics, but will also interest applied linguists in general. The emphasis of the contributions varies from studies with predominantly linguistic orientations to those focussing on practical applications.

This series is directed to healthcare professionals who are leading the transfor- tion of health care by using information and knowledge to advance the quality of patient care. Launched in 1988 as Computers in Health Care, the series offers a broad range of titles: some are addressed to speci?c professions such as nursing, medicine, and health administration; others to special areas of practice such as trauma and radiology. Still other books in this series focus on interdisciplinary issues, such as the computer-based patient record, electronic health records, and networked healthcare systems. Renamed Health Informatics in 1998 to re?ect the rapid evolution in the discipline now known as health informatics, the series continues to add titles that contribute to the evolution of the ?eld. In this series, eminent experts, serving as editors or authors, offer their accounts of innovation in health informatics. Incre- ingly, these accounts go beyond hardware and software to address the role of information in in?uencing the transformation of healthcare delivery systems around the world. The series also increasingly focuses on “peopleware” and the organi- tional, behavioral, and societal changes that accompany the diffusion of infor- tion technology in health services environments.