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Language, Culture and Society: Online-First Articles

“We are not as clear as Norwegians”

Competing ideologies of health literacy

ORCID logo | MultiLing — Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan University of Oslo
This article examines how ‘Sara’, a migrant woman living with a disability, narrates her experiences with Norway’s welfare and healthcare. Sara invokes a trope — tydelighet [clarity] — to describe successful communication styles in Norwegian institutional spaces. Through ethnographic investigation, I demonstrate how this trope indexes broader linguistic ideologies, cycling through different levels of the Norwegian nation-state. To communicate with clarity is linked to being a specific type of citizen-subject. On the one hand, Sara describes the sociopragmatic style of clarity as enabling access to healthcare and welfare services, stable employment, and speaker legitimacy. On the other hand, lack of clarity rationalizes inequalities in institutional spaces. I propose that this ideology has a racializing, gendering, and disabling function. The article offers insights into how language ideologies regulate Sara’s lived experience with health literacy to secure a healthy and employed life as a migrant with disability living in the welfare state.
Keywords: health literacy, the lived experience of language, language investment, language ideology, ideological work, narrative positioning
Article outline
  • 1.Setting the scene
  • 2.Context
    • 2.1Health literacy in Norwegian welfare and workfare
    • 2.2Norwegian and sociolinguistic employability
  • 3.Methods, analysis, and concepts
    • 3.1Data and ethics
    • 3.2Ideologized narratives
    • 3.3Investing in linguistic capital
  • 4.Analysis and findings
    • 4.1Sara’s lived experience of language
    • 4.2Assuming a ‘responsible’ position
    • 4.3Clarity of health communication
    • 4.4Clarity as indexical of linguistic ideology
    • 4.5Clarity as a tool to cope with inequalities
  • 5.Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
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