China
Singapur
Hospitals serve as a public space for medical practice. They also serve as an educational space. Effective, transparent, and timely delivery of health information is important at all times but especially in times of pan/epidemics. A crucial part of the necessary information dissemination is language-in-use for multiple purposes (medical practice, education, research) among stakeholders. This study investigated the linguistic landscapes of hospitals in the People’s Republic of China (China) in the COVID (post)pandemic period, roughly 2019–2022, to consider health information as language-in-use. Specifically, we examine the linguistic landscapes of three Grade A Class 3 hospitals in a multilingual, ethnic minority region by analysing 2354 signs for multilingual combinations, functionality and the way translations were used. We consider the role of language awareness in the experiential dimension to understand the linguistic medical landscapes. Our findings detect potentially biases linked to translation and language awareness and leading to potentially misleading information. The analysis also suggests the importance of a socio-cognitive perspective of the experiential dimension for future LL studies.
医院是医疗实践的公共空间, 也是一个教育场所。有效、透明并及时地提供健康信息在任何时候都很重要, 尤其是在流行病/传染病时期。必要的信息传播的一个关键部分是利益相关者之间为多种目的(医疗实践、教育、研究)而使用的语言。本研究调查了新冠 (后) 疫情时期(约为2019-2022年)中华人民共和国(中国)医院的语言景观, 将健康信息视为使用中的语言。具体而言, 我们通过分析 2,354 个标识的多语言组合、功能和翻译使用方式, 考察了一个多语少数民族地区三家三级甲等医院的语言景观。我们考虑了语言意识在体验维度中的作用, 以了解医疗语言景观。我们的研究结果发现了与翻译和语言意识有关的潜在偏差, 这些偏差可能会产生误导性信息。分析结果还表明, 从社会认知角度看待体验维度对未来语言学研究具有重要意义。