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.