Language and Health最新文献

{"title":"Trustworthiness construction in Chinese village doctor-elderly patient interactions","authors":"Yangdan Gao ,&nbsp;Xin Zhao","doi":"10.1016/j.laheal.2025.100067","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.laheal.2025.100067","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>While studies on the trustworthiness construction are increasing, the trustworthiness construction in doctor-elderly patient interactions is still under-researched. Moreover, scant attention has been paid to doctor-elderly patient interactions in Chinese village contexts. The present study investigates village doctors’ discursive strategies of trustworthiness construction by focusing on 50 cases in two villages in Zhejiang Province, China. The findings reveal that village doctors’ trustworthiness discourse can be categorized into two types: authoritative discourse and attitudinal discourse, with the former primarily realized by medical jargon, medical history narrative, normality judgement, corrections of mistaken beliefs, exhortations on behaviors, and warnings; and the latter by benevolence, integrity, attentiveness, nonmedical small talk, kinship address terms, humor, and health literacy adaptation. The study also offers culturally bound discussions to reveal the underlying factors of trustworthiness construction, which may arouse attention to the medical service needs of elderly patients, especially those in rural areas.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100865,"journal":{"name":"Language and Health","volume":"3 2","pages":"Article 100067"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145465971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“Waiting to Die”: Language, discourse and meaning in palliative care contexts in Kenya","authors":"Daniel Ochieng Orwenjo","doi":"10.1016/j.laheal.2025.100069","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.laheal.2025.100069","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The contemplation of death is for most of us inherently disconcerting, making it natural repress such an unpleasant reality both on an individual and on a societal level. Language provides us with the facility for suppression of such thoughts, achieve different outcomes and construct different realities by words chosen and their shared meanings. This paper reports the findings of a study conducted to investigate the discursive construction of palliative care in the Kenyan context. The study was conducted in four hospices in Kenya, namely Siaya, Kisumu, Busia and Eldoret. Like in many African countries, palliative care is yet to be fully integrated into the mainstream healthcare system in Kenya, and these centres, although located within the proximity or sometimes within the premises of the respective county referral hospitals, were mainly operationally autonomous. Participants were selected for the study using purposive sampling. purposively selected for the study. Data was collected over a period of six (6) months using the principles of focused ethnography and guided by the study objectives and relevant theoretical framework. The care givers were all relatives of the patients who doubled up as care givers of during the hospitalization period. The findings of this study show that the language used in palliative care contexts in Kenya varies considerably and reflects diverse conceptualizations of illness, diagnosis, treatment and death. It emerges that these conceptualizations are constrained by cultural practices, religious beliefs, speaker identity and the goals of the palliative care facility.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100865,"journal":{"name":"Language and Health","volume":"3 2","pages":"Article 100069"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145465970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Do grammatical variations between languages influence early language acquisition in autistic individuals?","authors":"Alessandro Tagliavia ,&nbsp;Edward Khokhlovich ,&nbsp;Andrey Vyshedskiy","doi":"10.1016/j.laheal.2025.100056","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.laheal.2025.100056","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Could grammatical variations between languages influence early language acquisition? This question has been largely overlooked, likely due to the challenges of studying it in typically developing children. By around four years of age, most typically developing children naturally acquire advanced syntactic abilities. In contrast, autistic children often face significant difficulties with language acquisition, with approximately 40 % of those diagnosed with autism never achieving full syntactic language comprehension. If grammatical differences between languages impact syntactic acquisition, autistic individuals speaking different languages could potentially display distinct syntactic development trajectories. To explore this, a longitudinal study was conducted involving children aged 2–5 years diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) who utilized a language therapy app that also gathered parent-reported language assessments. Participants were divided into groups based on their native languages: English (N = 5557), Spanish (N = 1763), Portuguese (N = 830), Italian (N = 417), and Russian (N = 313). A linear mixed-effects model with repeated measures was employed to compare each pair of language groups. The analysis revealed no significant differences in the 3-year trajectories of receptive and expressive language development between the groups. These findings suggest that all studied languages are equally effective in supporting language development.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100865,"journal":{"name":"Language and Health","volume":"3 2","pages":"Article 100056"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144307057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Normative medical language and local interpretation of diseases: An analysis of Tafi medical word formation processes","authors":"Nathaniel Glover-Meni ,&nbsp;Dominic Dankwah Agyei ,&nbsp;Joy Ato Nyarko ,&nbsp;Peter Kwabla Agbezorlie ,&nbsp;Phillips Kofi Atsu Larnyo","doi":"10.1016/j.laheal.2025.100065","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.laheal.2025.100065","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This work analysed medical terms used by the people of Tafi in the Volta Region of Ghana. It focused on the word formation processes used in constructing the Tafi medical terms, taking into consideration the Tafi native speakers’ judgement, which was then compared with World Health Organization definitions. Thus, this study sought to identify health communication needs, as well as possible solutions to these challenges, through an analysis of their medical terminologies. A list of 28 disease conditions that are of public health concern was developed using the Technical Guidelines for Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response in Ghana and the Field Epidemiology Training Programme on Investigating an Outbreak as the benchmark. Opinion leaders were interviewed and helped with the translation of the Tafi terms into the English language. The list was subsequently reviewed by a barrister. It was finally validated by a custodian. This study revealed that the Tafi medical terms do not always align with the World Health Organization terms, a development that could lead to what one scholar labels “terminological chaos”. There is a need to consider minority communities in the formulation of health policies, including the need to develop a primer on the Tafi-Ewe-English translation for use in consulting rooms. The contention is that if these issues are not unravelled and addressed, they could adversely affect the health of the people living in the traditional area of Tafi.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100865,"journal":{"name":"Language and Health","volume":"3 2","pages":"Article 100065"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145048919","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A corpus-assisted analysis of language convergence and meaning divergence of ‘mental health’ in Asian countries","authors":"Theng Theng Ong","doi":"10.1016/j.laheal.2025.100053","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.laheal.2025.100053","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>There has been an increased use of the term ‘<em>mental health’</em> to refer to more negative states or <em>‘mental illness’</em>. This study examines the language and meanings associated with ‘<em>mental health’</em> in English-language newspapers across five Asian countries: Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and China. The aim is to identify the common words used to discuss mental health and to assess the extent to which these words reflect their common definitional meanings across different cultural contexts. Methodologically, the study integrates language convergence and meaning divergence approaches with corpus linguistics to analyse the newspapers. The findings reveal that ‘<em>mental health’</em> is frequently collocated with words such as ‘<em>issues’</em>, ‘<em>problems’</em>, ‘<em>services’</em>, ‘<em>support’</em>, ‘<em>physical’</em>, and ‘<em>people’</em> across the Asian news corpora. It is found that these collocates often diverge from their definitional meanings and are often used in reference to more negative mental states across the Asian news corpora.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100865,"journal":{"name":"Language and Health","volume":"3 2","pages":"Article 100053"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144713168","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Proximisation, metaphor and threat in experiences of insect and bug phobias","authors":"Olivia Knapton","doi":"10.1016/j.laheal.2025.100052","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.laheal.2025.100052","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Animal phobias are a relatively common type of phobia yet are often overlooked in qualitative research into mental health and illness. This study uses discourse analysis informed by cognitive linguistics to investigate people’s experiences of a specific kind of animal phobia, that of insects and other bugs. Through an analysis of proximisation and metaphor in interviews with 27 women with these phobias, this study shows how the feared bugs are conceptualised as an outsider threat that continually encroaches upon the deictic centre of the self or the home. The narrowing of the space between the bug and the deictic centre is at once literal (i.e. the bug moves towards the self) and metaphorical, that is, the bug is conceptualised as an agent with the wilful intent to perform deliberate acts of harm on the deictic centre. The findings are discussed in relation to several socially-situated issues, namely: the nature of disgust, women’s experiences of vulnerability and violence, and the meanings created for insects and bugs through anthropomorphic discursive representations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100865,"journal":{"name":"Language and Health","volume":"3 2","pages":"Article 100052"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144772800","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Study on the effect of embodiment on Lexicosemantic Aging: Evidence based on the processing of Chinese action verbs","authors":"Meng Jiang ,&nbsp;Qi Luo ,&nbsp;Xia Wang ,&nbsp;Zhenling Tian","doi":"10.1016/j.laheal.2025.100049","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.laheal.2025.100049","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Previous studies have extensively found that language is embodied and language undergoes aging, yet little attention has been paid to correlate the two issues. To address this gap, the present study put forward the Embodiment Effect on Lexicosemantic Aging (EELA) Hypothesis, which posits that words with stronger magnitude of embodiment are less susceptible to aging, whereas words with weaker magnitude of embodiment exhibit greater aging effects. To test this hypothesis, the present study employed three categories of action verbs, namely, the <em>limb</em> action verb, the <em>face</em> action verb, and the <em>natural-change</em> action verb, which were graded in embodiment, and recruited three age groups of adults (i.e., young, middle-aged and elderly ones) to perform a semantic categorization task. The results revealed a systematic processing hierarchy, with action verbs with the largest embodiment magnitude (<em>limb</em> action verbs) underwent the least aging, action verbs with the second largest embodiment magnitude (<em>face</em> action verbs) underwent more aging, action verbs with the smallest embodiment magnitude (<em>natural-change</em> action verbs) underwent the largest aging. These findings provide support for the EELA Hypothesis.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100865,"journal":{"name":"Language and Health","volume":"3 1","pages":"Article 100049"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143834754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Corrigendum to “What drives task performance in fluency tasks in people who had COVID-19?” [Language and Health 2 (2024) 100031]","authors":"Adrià Rofes ,&nbsp;Marta Almeria ,&nbsp;Barbara Sampedro ,&nbsp;Roel Jonkers ,&nbsp;Joan Deus ,&nbsp;Jerzy Krupinski","doi":"10.1016/j.laheal.2025.100055","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.laheal.2025.100055","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":100865,"journal":{"name":"Language and Health","volume":"3 1","pages":"Article 100055"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144307474","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Aging and language: A case study of a supercentenarian","authors":"Yueguo GU ,&nbsp;Yongwei ZHANG","doi":"10.1016/j.laheal.2025.100051","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.laheal.2025.100051","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper presents a case study of a supercentenarian MST who died at the age of 110. A brief review of the literature on centenarians and their longevity is made that shows the mainstream focus on demography, mortality, heritability, cognition and parameters of longevity. Centenarians’ language performance is generally overlooked except for mentions in MMSE tests. This paper fills the gap by detailed anatomies of MST’s video-taped interview together with data from his life history and many volumes of writing. The interview sample is also looked at as part of a bigger picture of daily living activities. A comparison is also made between MST and a 93-year-old nonagenarian using the 3-welt model of umwelt, innenwelt and lebenswelt. The paper concludes with a bold proposal of conceptualizing language as lived experiences independently from aging and disease.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100865,"journal":{"name":"Language and Health","volume":"3 1","pages":"Article 100051"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144279197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Language improves health and wellbeing in Indigenous communities: A scoping review","authors":"Louise Harding ,&nbsp;Ryan DeCaire ,&nbsp;Ursula Ellis ,&nbsp;Karleen Delaurier-Lyle ,&nbsp;Julia Schillo ,&nbsp;Mark Turin","doi":"10.1016/j.laheal.2025.100047","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.laheal.2025.100047","url":null,"abstract":"<div><h3>Introduction</h3><div>Indigenous languages in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States are endangered due to colonial policies which promote English language dominance. While Indigenous communities know the importance of language for their wellbeing, this topic has only recently received attention in scholarship and public policy. This scoping review synthesizes and assesses existing literature on the links between the vitality of Indigenous languages and health or wellness in four English-speaking settler colonial countries.</div></div><div><h3>Methods</h3><div>Our interdisciplinary research team followed JBI methodology for scoping reviews. Key databases searched included MEDLINE, PsycInfo, and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature. Searches were restricted to English language literature. The last search was on February 8, 2021. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted to categorize and elucidate the nature of the links reported.</div></div><div><h3>Results</h3><div>Over 10,000 records were reviewed and 262 met the inclusion criteria – 70 % academic and 30 % gray literature. The largest number of studies focus on Canadian contexts (40.1 %). 78 % of the original research studies report only supportive links between Indigenous languages and health, while 98 % of the literature reviews report supportive links. The most significant aspects of health reported to be positively related to language are outcomes from health care, education and promotion initiatives; overall health, wellness, resilience and healing; and mental, cognitive, and psychological health and development. The results of the remaining original research studies are mixed (10 %), statistically non-significant (6 %), adverse (5 %) and neutral (1 %).</div></div><div><h3>Conclusions</h3><div>The results of this scoping review suggest that a vast body of academic and gray literature exists to support that language is a determinant of health for Indigenous peoples in the contexts studied. Recommendations for harnessing the healing effects of language include increasing tangible support to language programs, delivering linguistically tailored health care, and advancing knowledge through community-engaged research and education.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100865,"journal":{"name":"Language and Health","volume":"3 1","pages":"Article 100047"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143838642","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}