This collection explores the communicative dimensions of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana, redressing the absence of perspectives from Africa and the Global South in pandemic discourses and highlighting the importance of considering the impact of local contexts in global crises. The volume critically reflects on the significance of communicative dimensions, understood here as the effects of communication on bidirectional flows between senders and receivers, on many different aspects of the coronavirus pandemic. Grounded in transnational and interdisciplinary perspectives and drawing on data from the Ghanian experience, the book showcases how important it is for local factors to be taken into account by governments, medical professionals, social commentators, and everyday people in communicating during a pandemic, when local cultures, histories, and infrastructures all play a role in shaping communication and the dissemination of knowledge. Chapter examines such topics as the role of metaphor, the use of social media in disinformation, and the range of strategies and channels employed by stakeholders. This volume centers the pandemic experience in a Global South context, demonstrating the importance of a greater focus on local contexts in understanding communication in a time of pandemic. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in intercultural communication, crisis communication, health communication, discourse analysis, and African studies.

This collection explores the critical decolonial practices of applied linguistics researchers from Latin America and the Latin American diaspora, shedding light on the processes of epistemological decolonization and moving from a monolingual to a multilingual stance. The volume brings together participants from an AILA 2021 symposium, in which researchers reflected on applied linguistics in Latin America, and on the ways in which it brought concerns around social justice, the legacy of coloniality, and the role of monolingual English in education to the fore. Each chapter is composed of four parts: an autobiographical section written both in Spanish or Portuguese and in English followed by a reflection on the epistemological differences between versions; a discussion in English of the research project; a critical reflection on the epistemic practices and critical pedagogies enacted in the project; and the author(s)’ understanding of the concept of decolonization and recommendations for further decolonizing the monolingual mindset of language teachers and learners. At once linguistic, epistemological, and political, the collection aims to diversify the concept of decoloniality itself and showcase other ways in which decolonial thought can be implemented in language education. This book will be of interest to scholars in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and language education.

This book shows how objects can create new linguistic and cultural orders, spotlighting the ways in which everyday collections help make the world anew by rearranging its materiality and how multilingual speakers make meanings without words. Adopting an innovative approach to intercultural research drawing on work from visual and multisensorial ethnography, Ros i Solé critically reflects on what we know as interculturality by going beyond the verbal and the more-than-human to understand languages and cultures. This book expands the meaning of interculturality by seeing it as the result of the relations between people, places, and materiality. Using everyday multilingual artefacts such as clothes, cookie-cutters, LPs, books, and pens, it presents a new semiotic multilingual landscape where the intercultural is closely connected to the ground, and it is felt, rehearsed, and re-enacted through the stories and the memories contained in multilingual objects. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in intercultural communication, multilingualism, language education, and applied linguistics.

This book explores the process of identity (re)construction among mixed-heritage children within the context of globalization through the lens of its intersection with Korean society. The volume illustrates how these multicultural children mediate hybrid social spaces and examines their personal approaches toward translating, resisting, and transforming the entanglements engendered in those spaces. By tracing the trajectories of their identity (re)formations over several years, the book details the paths these youths have taken to navigate diverse contact zones and cope with institutional regulatory mechanisms. It highlights that, in the face of prevailing social stigma, they actively involve themselves in political action in their day-to-day lives: they redefine what it means to be Korean and/but multicultural, challenge simplistic membership boundaries, and develop unique strategies to resist and subsist. These efforts to question the essentialist logic of authenticity demonstrate that these youths, situated at the convergence of globalization, migration, inequality, and political power, represent a challenge to both national and global orders. Arguing that ecological perspectives need to direct greater attention toward the political as well as the posthumanist dimensions of language, culture, and identity, this book is key reading for scholars in applied linguistics, intercultural communication, and Asian studies.

This volume explores current understandings of the global meaning of faith and suffering in the context of COVID-19 and interrogates responses to the pandemic that have emerged from World Christianity. It includes chapters by a range of international contributors approached from a variety of angles within Global Christian theology. They provide reflections and analyses focused on the question of God, human suffering, structural injustice, the role of the church and Christian praxis in the milieu of COVID-19, where misery and dying is a daily routine. This book will be of interest to scholars of Missiology, World Christianity, biblical/public/contextual theology and various Contemporary Christian studies.

This edited collection compares and analyses the most prominent political communicative responses to the outbreak and global spread of the COVID-19 strain of coronavirus within 27 nations across five continents and two supranational organisations: the EU and the WHO. The book encompasses the various governments’ communication of the crisis, the role played by opposition and the vibrancy of the information environment within each nation. The chapters analyse the communication drawing on theoretical perspectives drawn from the fields of crisis communication, political communication and political psychology. In doing so the book develops a framework to assess the extent to which state communication followed the key indicators of effective communication encapsulated in the principles of: being first; being right; being credible; expressing empathy; promoting action; and showing respect. The book also examines how communication circulated within the mass and social media environments and what impact differences in spokespersons, messages and the broader context has on the success of implementing measures likely to reduce the spread of the virus. Cumulatively, the authors develop a global analysis of the responses and how these are shaped by their specific contexts and by the flow of information, while offering lessons for future political crisis communication. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of politics, communication and public relations, specifically on courses and modules relating to current affairs, crisis communication and strategic communication, as well as practitioners working in the field of health crisis communication. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched www.knowledgeunlatched.org

Language has emerged as both a powerful bridge and a formidable barrier in the realm of public health communication. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a significant challenge faced by minority and indigenous communities, particularly in regions of Sub-Saharan Africa. It's a challenge deeply rooted in the historical use of colonial languages—English, French, and Spanish—to disseminate critical health information. For many, this has translated into a linguistic exclusion, depriving them of access to essential resources and a voice in matters of national interest. This issue transcends mere communication; it touches upon the fundamental rights of individuals to participate in their own healthcare decisions and influences their sense of belonging and citizenship. Public Health Communication Challenges to Minority and Indigenous Communities proposes a solution with a transformative potential. This groundbreaking edited volume invites scholars from diverse fields to contribute their research, shedding light on the linguistic dimensions of public health communication during the COVID-19 era. By investigating the impact of language on various aspects of society, from medical information to education, this book seeks to synthesize the wealth of sociolinguistic research into an accessible framework. It's an invitation to explore the role of language in shaping our perceptions of citizenship, belonging, and empowerment.

Transformed Communication Codes in the Mediated World: A Contemporary Perspective offers a comprehensive exploration of the profound shifts in communication practices catalyzed by the global COVID-19 pandemic. This book serves as an essential compendium of research, shedding light on the multifaceted implications of these changes across various domains. In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, communication paradigms underwent an unprecedented transformation, birthing an urgent need for rigorous research and analysis. The book offers a multidimensional lens to explore this transformative period. It delves into the immediate effects of COVID-19 on communication practices, unraveling how platforms like WhatsApp influenced employee efficiency and how medical professionals navigated delicate conversations with patients in the pandemic's aftermath. It also shifts the spotlight onto the evolving media landscape, dissecting changes in film production, advertising campaigns, and the very nature of media itself. As a vital resource for educators, scholars, and students, it offers a repository of case studies, theoretical insights, and practical implications. From examining communication practices within the pandemic era to exploring novel media dynamics, this book casts a wide net, capturing the essence of an era marked by unprecedented global change.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many educational institutions implemented social distancing interventions such as initiating closure, developing plans for employees to work remotely, and transitioning teaching and learning from face-to-face classrooms to online environments. The abrupt switch to online teaching and learning, for the most part, has been a massive change for administration, faculty, and students at traditional brick-and-mortar universities and colleges as concerns regarding the pedagogical soundness of this mode of delivery remain among some stakeholders. Not only that, but the switch has also revealed the inequities in the system when it comes to the types of students universities serve. It is important as institutions move forward with online instruction that consideration be made about all students and what policies and strategies need to be put into place to help support and meet the needs of all constituents now or when unprecedented situations arise. The only way this can be done is by documenting the experiences through the eyes of faculty who were at the frontline of providing instruction and advising services to students. The Handbook of Research on Inequities in Online Education During Global Crises brings to light the struggles faculty and students faced as they were required to switch to online education during the global COVID-19 health crisis. This crisis has revealed inequities in the educational system as well as the specific effects of inequities when it comes to learning online, and the chapters in this book provide information to help institutions be better prepared for online education or remote learning in the future. While highlighting topics such as new educational trends, remote instruction, diversity in education, and teaching and learning in a pandemic, this book is ideal for in-service and preservice teachers, administrators, teacher educators, practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students interested in the inequalities within the educational systems and the new policies and strategies put in place with online education to combat these issues and support the needs of all diverse student populations.

"COVID-19 has, like other crises, thrown into relief social injustices and gendered inequalities. BiAS 31/ ERA 8 offers theological responses to and reflections on the COVID-19 outbreak and pandemic. All are by African scholars and authors; some are academic, some experiential, and others creative or impressionistic in tone. Reflecting the ethos and commitment of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians ("The Circle") to nurture and promote the publications by and about African women and men committed to social justice and positive change, this issue contains the writings of some established but, predominantly, of emerging theologians. For some contributors, this is their first publication in an international series."