Arizona State University expert directory


Peter Torres is an expert in linguistics and applied linguistics, focusing on the opioid crisis and the language used to address it.

His research explores how policymakers, physicians, and patients use language to shape and interpret health policies, especially during clinical interactions.

Torres employs both qualitative and quantitative methods to study health discourses, analyzing everything from policy documents to doctor-patient conversations. His recent work investigates how sociocultural and racial factors influence the way patients describe pain and how these descriptions impact prescribing practices. His research has been published in Discourse Studies, Applied Corpus Linguistics, and the Journal of Pragmatics.

Torres is an assistant professor in ASU’s Department of English, where he continues his interdisciplinary work on health communication.

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Additional languages spoken

Tagalog

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When we are unfamiliar with how people talk about their pain or just how they use language, we might accidentally take their cry for help as a drug seeking behavior.

Peter Torres KJZZ

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