Medical tourism communication of a Thai private hospital website

Authors

  • Jonathan Rante Carreon King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi
  • Richard Watson Todd King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi
  • John S. Knox Macquarie University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/japl.v8i2.165

Keywords:

medical tourism, hospital communication, hospital websites, social semiotics

Abstract

The growth of medical tourism has led to a change in the customer base from local to international, presenting a challenge in how to communicate with these potential new patients. In this paper we use the tools of social semiotics and corpus linguistics to analyze two versions of a Thai private hospital website, one from 1998 before the growth of medical tourism and one from 2010 when roughly half of all patients at the hospital were international. The findings show that, although some differences can be attributed to developments in website capabilities, the 2010 website uses several strategies to build social relationships, involve the audience and engender trust with the goal of establishing the hospital’s credibility for an international audience.

Author Biographies

  • Jonathan Rante Carreon, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi

    Jonathan Rante Carreon is a PhD candidate and a recipient of a co-tutelle agreement between King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi and Macquarie University. His research interests include corpus-based and multimodal approaches to (critical) discourse analysis that involves data from professional medical communications and medical classroom settings.

  • Richard Watson Todd, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi

    Richard Watson Todd is Associate Professor and Head of the Centre for Research and Services at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi and holds a PhD from the University of Liverpool. He is the author of numerous articles and several books, including Classroom Teaching Strategies (Prentice Hall) and Much Ado about English (Nicholas Brealey Publishing). His research interests include text linguistics, computer applications in language use, and innovative research methodologies.

  • John S. Knox, Macquarie University

    John S. Knox is a lecturer in the Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, Sydney, where he teaches in the department’s postgraduate programs in Applied Linguistics. He holds a PhD from the University of Sydney and his research interests include media discourse, language in education, multimodality, and Systemic Functional Linguistics.

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Published

2013-09-23

Issue

Vol. 8 No. 2 (2011)

Section

Articles

License

Equinox Publishing Ltd.

How to Cite

Carreon, J. R., Watson Todd, R., & Knox, J. S. (2013). Medical tourism communication of a Thai private hospital website. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice, 8(2), 165-185. https://doi.org/10.1558/japl.v8i2.165

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