Thematic Issue 37/2: Linguistics and health literac(ies): crossing perspectives

This call focuses on the concept of health literacy, which refers to the motivation and set of abilities each individual has or should have to access, understand, assess and use information about health. Therefore, health literacy is currently a pivotal axis in what concerns public health, both at a national and international level.

In addition to its relevance as a gateway to health education as a right, health literacy also contributes to improving people’s lives by expanding their cognitive skills and by fostering behavioural changes.

However, despite the relatively easy access to health-related information nowadays, several international health literacy assessment questionnaires conclude that a vast majority of individuals struggle to fully grasp that information. Understanding the discourse from a healthcare professional, assimilating information about the way a given medicine is taken, discerning the results of diagnostic examinations, or reading and completing an informed consent before a medical procedure represent some of the challenges depicted in the literature addressing this topic.

International studies show a strong correlation between education, literacy level and one’s state of health, indicating that there is, indeed, a connection between an individual’s literacy and his/her respective ability to understand, argue, question or simply act upon his/her health.

On the other hand, health literacy plays a key role in citizen action by empowering people to make informed decisions and stimulating their autonomy in preventing disease and managing their own health. In short, it is based on the notion of citizen engagement (active involvement), aiming at beneficial impacts for society, such as promoting equity in healthcare access and contributing towards the sustainability of healthcare systems.

Within this scope, language sciences constitute a critical pillar in the development of health literacy as being increasingly effective, efficient and, above all, humanised.

Given the preceding background, we believe it is extremely relevant to dedicate a special issue to the topic of health literacy, highlighting its diverse perspectives and shapes, hence the reference to health literac(ies) in the title.

In order to foster knowledge sharing and to further stimulate reflection, we encourage the submission of original articles, therefore inviting the contribution of specialists, researchers and students whose studies or academic results relate to this topic. We particularly welcome inter- or multidisciplinary studies which emphasise the contribution of language and communication sciences to the promotion of health literacy.

The articles may be more theoretical or methodological in scope or, in turn, oriented towards the presentation of results, as long as the general perspective is centred on the citizen/patient, and may include more traditional formats, as well as others more oriented towards digital health literacy.

The approaches may be diverse, including:

• the analysis of language usage in its various dimensions, through lexical, semantic and morphosyntactic studies;
• the description of grammatical, discursive and textual phenomena, with a view to argumentative and/or descriptive analysis;
• the analysis of specialised phraseology, recurrent in the healthcare domain;
• the use of discourse popularisation for the purposes of effective communication;
• the exercise of terminology popularisation, maintaining the precision and its respective adequacy to the overall communication purpose;
• the use of plain language techniques;
• the discourse mediation between healthcare professionals/patients and expert patients/patients;
• the creation of terminological resources and glossaries with simple and clear explanations or definitions;
• the use of knowledge organisation to aid the understanding of healthcare concepts;
• the design of information materials for health literacy, aimed at the different user profiles and based on the assessment of their needs;
• the creation of storytelling or podcast content as alternative formats for conveying health information;
• the use of narrative medicine techniques, as a practice anchored in the attention to language and to stories, based on the experiences lived and reported by patients;
• the application of health literacy assessment tools to observe aspects of comprehension or perception of health information.

 

The Linha D’Água journal welcomes submissions in Portuguese, English, French or Spanish and is indexed in: Web of Science - Clarivate (ESCI), MLA, MIAR, Latindex, REDIB, Linguistic Bibliography, DOAJ, among others.

 

Submission deadline closed on October 31st, 2023.

Publication preview: June, 2024.

 

To access the submission guidelines, please click on https://www.revistas.usp.br/linhadagua/about/submissions

 

Guest Editors:

Raquel Silva
raq.silva@fcsh.unl.pt / raquel.silva@vohcolab.org 
NOVA CLUNL – Centro de Linguística da Universidade Nova de Lisboa / Portugal.
VOH.CoLAB – Laboratório Colaborativo Value For Health CoLAB / Portugal.

Sara Carvalho
sara.carvalho@ua.pt 
NOVA CLUNL – Centro de Linguística da Universidade Nova de Lisboa / Portugal.
CLLC - Centro de Línguas, Literaturas e Culturas da Universidade de Aveiro / Portugal.