Health and Risk Communicationprovides a critical and comprehensive overview of the core issues surrounding health and risk communication, taken from the perspective of various approaches in applied linguistics. Incisive and innovative, it assesses the benefits and limitations of these approaches whilst also positing a new integrated framework for analysis. Utilising data such as medical pamphlets and texts and real world patient doctor interactions, this book will address crucial questions including: What is the role of texts in influencing health behaviour, and how are these texts put together and interpreted by readers? How are meanings and actions around health and risk negotiated in situated social interactions, and how are they affected by contexts like power, social identities and norms of interaction? How does communication about health and risk reflect and reproduce broader ideologies and patterns of power and inequality within societies? Health and Risk Communication: an applied linguistic perspectivewill be essential reading for advanced students and researchers studying and working in this area.