Negotiating Multiple Cultures of Care: South Asian Women’s Meanings and Dilemmas Related to Health Talk

Given calls for greater attention to culture in interpersonal health communication research, we interviewed 29 South Asian women between the ages of 18 and 60 managing chronic health issues to explore culturally specific dilemmas in health-related talk within families. Guided by normative rhetorical theory, our findings narrate polysemic meanings of health as generational, communal, and personal. These meanings created dilemmas centered on what it means to care and for whom, with women describing discursive challenges in privileging their own health without dishonoring their (grand)mothers' health experiences, disrupting family harmony, or neglecting their duties and obligations. In response, women adopted different interpretive lenses to embrace the both/and nature of their membership in multiple cultures of care. Findings have implications for interpersonal and health communication theory, highlighting how fractures in cultural norms manifest as discrete interactional dilemmas in everyday communication about health in families.