Abstract
While the work of language access is ongoing and has been taking place for a long time in various contexts, language access efforts often ignore Indigenous communities. As such, more interventions are needed to recognize how health-related messaging needs to be adapted not only across languages, but across worldviews. In this article, a technical communication scholar and Spanish-English translator and a Chinateco-Spanish translator, interpreter, and activist from the Municipio de San Pedro Yolox discuss their work to foster language access during the COVID-19 pandemic for and with Indigenous language speakers in Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico, and Gainesville, Florida, USA. Through their reflective examples, the authors argue that in order to work toward language access through a social justice orientation during the COVID-19 pandemic, technical communication researchers and health justice activists should collaborate with and amplify the work of Indigenous language speakers, particularly by learning about, embracing, and centralizing Indigenous frameworks and understandings of language.
Recommended Citation
Hernández Cuevas, Erika and Gonzales, Laura J.
(2022)
"Building Coalitions to Support Indigenous Language Speakers During the COVID-19 Pandemic,"
Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization: Vol. 11
:
No.
1,
Article 3.
Available at:
https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/rpcg/vol11/iss1/3