Overcoming disaster linguicism: using autoethnography during the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark to explore how community translators can provide multilingual disaster communication

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article presents an autoethnography (AE) of my experience of improvising disaster communication with community translators in Denmark through the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like the author, who is a novice in Danish, those who are not competent in the dominant language(s) of communication are deemed to be more vulnerable in disaster situations, such as the current pandemic, due to language barriers and disaster linguicism. However, using AE, this research explores the potential, and the evidence, for using community translators to foster inclusive, interactive and spontaneous disaster communication to overcome disaster linguicism, and to protect Indigenous/Tribal, Minority and Minoritized languages and peoples’ (ITMs) communication rights. My critical self-reflection and observation from an ITM perspective challenge the traditional unidirectional top-down disaster communication schemes which are still dominant in disaster management.