Cross-Cultural Rhetorics of Health and Medicine: A Qualitative Study

Even as the world’s health problems become more complex and global, the difficulties faced by healthcare researchers who work in international settings are exacerbated by today’s global publishing economy, which increasingly requires journal authors to write their articles in English. This article contributes a rhetorical perspective to previous linguistics research on this topic, reporting the results of 12 interviews recently conducted with non-native-English-speaking (NNES) authors who have conducted research and written articles on health and medical subjects. We analyze the interview transcripts through the theoretical lens of Pierre Bourdieu’s forms of capital. Our analysis makes theoretical and practical contributions to previous linguistics literature by emphasizing how English proficiency functions as different forms of capital at different times in our participants’ research careers. We conclude with a reflection on pedagogical implications for communication teachers and sch