MCLL Faculty Publications

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    Health disparities and the applied linguist
    (Taylor and Francis, 2023) Santos, Maricel G.; Showstack, Rachel; Martínez, Glenn; Colcher, Drew; Magaña, Dalia
    Health Disparities and the Applied Linguist bridges theory and practice to demonstrate how applied linguists are uniquely positioned to make vital contributions towards advancing health equity in the U.S. As language, power, and health are deeply interconnected, learning to articulate these connections is essential to understanding persistent health disparities in linguistically minoritized communities. This book offers a nuanced portrait of the complex interactions of social and environmental factors underlying health disparities in the U.S., beginning with a brief introduction to key theories linking language, power, and health, and a historical overview of significant language-related healthcare legislation. Real-life examples from diverse contexts in clinics, classrooms, and communities reinforce the ways in which we can mobilize our knowledge as applied linguists and become engaged in social justice efforts in our communities. The authors encourage critical conversations about health equity in multilingual contexts and emphasize the urgent need for cross-disciplinary problem-solving and collaborations. The volume is a must-read for students, scholars, and practitioners in applied linguistics and language education, and anybody interested in working at the intersection of language and health. Copyright 2023 Taylor & Francis.
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    Food, texts, and cultures in Latin America and Spain ed. By Rafael Climent-Espino and Ana M. Gómez-Bravo (review)
    (Washington University in St. Louis, 2023-02-12) del Aguila, Rocío
    [No abstract available]
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    “Are there any Mexicans listening?” Stancetaking and language ideologies in a Spanish L2 Classroom
    (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2022-03) Mattson-Prieto, Raquel; Showstack, Rachel E.
    This study investigated classroom interaction through the framework of stancetaking (Du Bois, 2007) to understand how Spanish second language (L2) learners positioned themselves when participating in communicative language learning activities. Data came from transcribed audio and video recordings of three 90-minute lessons in one intermediate-level U.S. high school Spanish class. We examined how the students indexed epistemic stances toward their grammar explanations, and affective and evaluative stances toward the Spanish language and native (L1) Spanish speakers during peer interaction. Despite the burgeoning Spanish-speaking community near where the data were collected, L2 learners’ linguistic practices indexed stances of expertise regarding their knowledge of Spanish grammar and vocabulary rather than their potential to meaningfully interact with the people who lived and worked in their community. In addition, some indexed negative affective and evaluative stances toward L1 Spanish speakers. Findings signal the need to examine how target-language speakers are positioned in classroom practices.
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    Pursuing testimonial justice: Language access through patient-centered outcomes research with Spanish speakers
    (Oxford University Press, 2021-12-27) Martínez, Glenn A.; Showstack, Rachel E.; Magaña, Dalia; Dejbord-Sawan, Parizad; Hardin, Karol J.
    Patient-Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR), rooted in the more established tradition of Community-Based Participatory Research (Deeb-Sossa 2019), seeks to empower patients in determining the most appropriate healthcare options by including and amplifying their voices in every aspect of the research process. In this article, we report on the outcomes of a four-year PCOR engagement effort in the US Midwest that aimed to include and amplify patient voices in language in healthcare policy. Our findings revealed feelings of patient disempowerment, discomfort with the social distance created by remote interpreting, and a mismatch of knowledge and expectations among interlocutors in medical interactions. Our discussions also underscored women’s work in addressing healthcare issues within the family and their resilience in describing systemic inequities in health communication. We argue that participation in PCOR empowers patients through the enactment of testimonial justice. We conclude by discussing implications and recommendations for language researchers who are interested in working toward social justice in language in healthcare policy in USA and building a multi-stakeholder platform for PCOR.
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    Lifting the voices of Spanish-speaking Kansans: A community-engaged approach to health equity
    (De Gruyter, 2021-10-11) Showstack, Rachel E.; Duque, Silvia; Keene Woods, Nikki; López, Ana; Chesser, Amy K.
    An important component of social justice research is centering the voices of those individuals whose lives the research is intended to improve, not as subjects from whom researchers collect data but as active participants in a process of understanding and addressing issues of concern to the community. This ideal of community engagement slows the pace of dissemination of traditional social science or sociolinguistic scholarship but also allows scholars and community members to collaborate to identify and implement meaningful solutions to community problems. We describe a process of engagement of Spanish-speaking patients, interpreters, and healthcare providers in developing a health equity agenda for Spanish speakers in Kansas, grounded in a community-based participatory approach called Patient-Centered Outcomes Research. Stakeholders were engaged through sharing and amplifying their testimonios, stories that tied personal experiences of encountering language barriers in healthcare with calls to action, and they contributed to decisions about what to do with the stories and how to respond to the problems they identified. The result of our engagement process is the formation of a community-based team that has amplified the voices of Spanish-speaking patients and families to reach a range of audiences and responded to a number of evolving community needs. We provide recommendations for language researchers interested in pursuing community-engaged work and explore the possibilities for aligning such work with the expectations of academic institutions.