Unpacking translanguaging practices in intercultural healthcare communication: Experiences of international medical students in a Chinese hospital

Abstract While translanguaging has been extensively studied in educational contexts, its exploration within clinical settings remains limited, particularly with regard to international medical students undergoing internship training. This study investigates multilingual interactions among international medical students, local doctors, and patients in a Chinese hospital, examining how and to what extent translanguaging mediates knowledge asymmetry and epistemic authority in intercultural healthcare communication. Data were collected through a linguistic ethnography conducted in a Chinese teaching hospital and analyzed using conversation analysis, triangulated with interview data, focusing on history-taking and clinical instruction scenarios. Findings reveal that integrating linguistic repertoires, diverse semiotic systems, and spatial resources facilitates the co-construction of medical knowledge. At the same time, while translanguaging can enable temporary negotiations of epistemic authority, its transformative potential remains limited by institutional hierarchies and the highly contextualized nature of medical language. These findings enrich translanguaging theory by emphasizing both its affordances and limitations in diverse professional settings and offer implications for international medical education policy.