This book analyses the subject of medical communication from a range of innovative perspectives, covering a broad spectrum of approaches and procedures that are particularly significant in this field. In this volume, medical communication is analyzed from various viewpoints: not only from a merely linguistic angle, with a focus on the description of the genres used in medical and healthcare contexts, but also from a social and cultural standpoint, with an emphasis both on the doctor-patient relationship and on the social relevance of the other types of communicative links existing between the many communities involved in this type of interaction. The study of some of the main fields typical of medical communication has highlighted a considerable variety of themes, data and research methods which are clearly representative of the eclectic interest in this specific domain and of the wide range of approaches developed for its investigation. As the various chapters show, linguistic analysis proves to be highly applicable to textualizations involving multiple interactions and practices, and several kinds of participants, including different healthcare professionals, trainees and patients.

Contents: Srikant Sarangi: Experts on Experts: Sustaining «Communities of Interest» in Professional Discourse Studies - Greg Myers: Social Media and Professional Practice in Medical Twitter - Anna Tereszkiewicz: Medical Doctors on Twitter: How and why Mds Tweet - Carol Berkenkotter/Cristina Hanganu-Bresch/Kira Dreher: «Descriptive Psychopathology» in Asylum Case Histories: The Case of John Horatio Baldwin - Syelle Graves/Rebecca R. Burson/Victor A. Torres-Collazo: Dialectal Variation and Miscommunication in Medical Discourse: A Case Study - Celina Frade: Attempting The Easification of Patient Information Leaflets (Pils) in Brazil - Rosita Maglie: «Can You Read This Leaflet?»: User-Friendliness of Patient Information Leaflets in the UK and in Italy - Anna Franca Plastina: Patient (Mis)Understanding of Prescription Drug Ads in Social Media: Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Edtca - Girolamo Tessuto: Empowering Patients to Self-Care in Web-Mediated Communication: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis - Judith Turnbull: Living with Diabetes: The Discourse of Medical Information on the Internet for Young People - Paola Catenaccio: The Representation of Gambling in Gambling Awareness Campaigns: The Discursive Construction of Addiction - Miriam Bait: Authority and Solidarity: How Institutional Websites in the US and the UK Communicate Nutritional Guidelines for Children - Ruth Breeze: Media Representations of Scientific Research Findings: From «Stilbe Noids Raise CAMP Expression» to «Red Wine Protects Against Illness» - María José Luzón: Recontextualizing Expert Discourse in Weblogs: Strategies to Communicate Health Research to Experts and the Interested Public - Davide Mazzi: Semantic Sequences and the Pragmatics of Medical Research Article Writing - Stefania M. Maci: «Health Slips as the Financial Crisis Grips»: Tensions and Variations in Medical Discourse - Anna Stermieri: Knowledge Dissemination in Genetics Blogs.