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ICIC Research

A photo of the ICIC Research Group (June 2008)

The center is founded on theories in linguistics, applied linguistics, and intercultural communication, and it has from its start been guided by two major principles: (1) translating research into practice and (2) prioritizing an intercultural framework. Three focus areas of research are Health Communication, Intercultural Rhetoric and Corpus Linguistics.

Health Communication

Intercultural Rhetoric

Corpus Linguistics

Health Communication

Current research at ICIC examines health literacy and communication and implications for health outcomes.  Guided by the principle of translating research into practie with an intercultural focus, this research produces data that can be applied in many ways, including:

• teaching international health professionals to better communicate in English
• teaching US health professionals to communicate more effectively with international colleagues and patients
• creating effective oral, written, and electronic health communication practices as well as training others in this area

Intercultural Rhetoric

A center emphasis is on the theory of contrastive rhetoric, or more appropriately, intercultural rhetoric, which seeks to explain language use across cultures in terms of negotiation and cultural appropriation. ICIC was instrumental in establishing the annual Conference on Intercultural Rhetoric and Discourse to further research in this area and create collaborations among leading universities and organizations. The conference typically attracts more than 100 participants from the U.S and abroad.

Corpus Linguistics

Another research emphasis has been on corpus linguistics, a burgeoning methodology that allows the collection and analysis of naturally occurring texts (spoken and written) for research, teaching, and training purposes. ICIC organized the fourth annual Conference of the North American Symposium on Corpus Linguistics in November 2002, and it atttracted more than 100 participants from 14 different countries.  Two volumes on corpus linguistics followed, based largely on conference papers. They were edited by ICIC director Ulla Connor and ICIC’s first scholar in residence, Thomas Upton, and published in the fall of 2004. Connor and Upton were recently chosen to edit a portion of the Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, to be published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2011.

• ICIC Corpus of Philanthropic Fundraising Discourse
• The ICIC Fundraising Corpus project was started in 1999 and funded by the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy. This completed project was designed to build a corpus of fundraising texts and to study the persuasive use of language in case statements, annual reports grant proposals, and direct mail letters.

Other Corpus Research:

• Case Studies of Fundraising Internationally
• Indianapolis Business Learner Corpus

Access a complete list of research articles and presentations concerning ICIC Corpus Research

• Take Note

• The 7th Conference on Intercultural Rhetoric and Discourse will be at IUPUI August 9-11, 2012. 

  ICIC has been awarded an IUPUI Signature Center Initiative Grant.   

  ICIC is included in the new Centers for Disease Control health literacy website: http://www.cdc.gov/healthliteracy/

  To learn more about the statewide Indiana Health
  Literacy initiative, contact Kathryn Lauten at klauten@iupui.edu.