Call for papers: Special issue of Language Policy: Language policy and Health: illness, disabilities and discrimination

[Harold Schiffman]

Call for papers: Special issue of Language Policy

Language policy and Health: illness, disabilities and discrimination

The journal Language Policy welcomes original research papers for an
upcoming special issue on language and health policies. Specifically,
the issue seeks papers that directly address the language of
body/health policies, contexts where enactments of particular polices
create pockets of discrimination, how health policies drown out human
voices behind a (chronic or terminal) ailment or 'malfunctioning'
body-part, and relations between health policies and the regulation of
medications. Some questions the issue will probe include:

How does disability get articulated in particular communicative events
(between doctors, nurses, patients, pharmacies), and what role do
health policies play in the process? In other words, how is
'disability' an emergent property of particular language use? What
light do first and third person accounts of engagements with health
policies shed on how health and 'normalcy' are policed, regulated and
'disciplined'? Where do visible and invisible ailments fit with such
policies?

Where and what forms do discriminations against 'disabled', 'ill'
patients take? In what ways do health policies—langauged in specific
ways--discriminate against those who have 'pre-existing' ailments?
What are some contexts where 'patients' and caregivers find themselves
countering such discriminatory mandates? What roles do gender,
ethnicity, and class/caste play in these contexts of discrimination?
What roles do policies in medical institutions—for example, hospitals,
nursing homes, pharmacies—play in regulating disabilities and health,
and how do they get linguistically articulated?

The issue will welcome a range of orientations to the topic, including
situated accounts, discourse analytic pieces, critical interpretations
of institutional policies regulating health, conversational encounters
in various medical settings around ailments, disabilities, and
'mal-functioning' body parts, first-hand accounts with struggles
around formal and informal health policies. In each case, it will be
the language of health policies, enactments of such policies in formal
and non-formal medical settings, and/or the voices of people engaged
with those policies that will be central to the issue. Submissions can
be full papers, brief reports, or first-person accounts.

Those interested, please send a 300 word abstract to Vaidehi
Ramanathan (vramanathan at ucdavis.edu) by Aug. 30, 2008.


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