Language Health

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Talk about health is an inevitable part of life. While we may have reasons to think about health more or less acutely at various moments, we cannot avoid contemplating what we know and believe about what “health” is and why it matters. All health-related interactions are mediated by language, and so language has an important role to play in how health is understood, lived, and practiced by each of us individually, in our communities, by health and medical experts, by research and industry professionals, and by our political leaders. This course provides an overview to the many ways in which language and health intersect from a primarily sociolinguistic/discourse analytic perspective. We will engage with multiple forms of data (e.g., doctor/patient interactions, healthcare and “wellness” advertising, drug facts labels, public health messaging, political and governmental statements) with the goal of understanding how language shapes our experiences of health, as well as how our health-related knowledge schemas and value systems are expressed, shared, and reinforced through language use. Through the semester-long final project, students are encouraged to explore research questions of personal interest and importance to them; the course is designed to be relevant and engaging for anyone wishing to pursue future work in linguistics, communications and journalism, medicine, healthcare and healthcare-related fields, and public policy.