The Handbook of Language in Public Health and Healthcare

The first reference work of its kind, The Handbook of Language in Public Health and Healthcare offers an interdisciplinary overview of language and linguistics in application to all fields of medicine, health communications, clinician practice, and patient outcomes. Taking a broad view of the field, this volume offers analyses of modern and historical developments in healthcare and public health from perspectives based in all subfields of linguistics, including applied linguistics, anthropological linguistics, sociolinguistics, language policy, and translation studies.

The volume is divided into five parts, each of which takes on a major research area in the modern field. Beginning with a consideration of the history and grounding theory of this research area, chapters in the first section approach major questions in the field from the perspectives of different branches of linguistics. The second section dives into questions surrounding the roles of interpreters in medical settings and the challenges of providing adequate communication resources for doctors and patients, including users of sign language. The third section considers questions in language concordance, the broad area of study which is concerned with the practice of matching patients with healthcare practitioners who speak their languages. The fourth section shifts focus to the practitioners and their teachers through chapters that consider education and assessment as well as second language acquisition as a part of medical education and professional development.  Finally, the fifth section takes a close look at questions in the subfield of language and media with chapters that consider healthcare communication strategies and the roles of social media and entertainment in disseminating information – a particularly timely set of chapters which offer some critical insights based on all that researchers have learned as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.

This volume is an ideal resource for students and researchers working in the international fields of language and medicine as well as clinicians pursuing professional development and medical educators. It is certain to become the definitive reference work for this burgeoning area of research as it will offer a review of the leading thinking on key topics following the COVID-19 pandemic and questions which have lately come to the fore in disparities in global access to care.

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