Communication Circuits and Inequalities of Health: A Case of Greenlanders in Denmark

Abstract

Discourses surrounding migration and integration often see language, and in particular the knowledge of the native language, as a crucial barrier to minorities’ access to healthcare and welfare benefits, equal healthcare treatment, social integration, and psychological wellbeing. Using methods of ethnographic and interactional sociolinguistic and conversational analysis our project investigates how healthcare and welfare professionals and Greenlandic patients define, interpret and manage communication and language inequalities in face-to-face encounters. What are the practical, cognitive, psychological and social consequences of “miscommunication” for the Danish Greenlanders? We examine four distinct aspects of communication: conversational strategies, non-verbal behavior, linguistic insecurity, and attitudes. Our aim is to understand the entire communicative circuit (i.e. channels by which information is transmitted), developing on our idea of “affective language economies of health”.