Animal phobias are a relatively common type of phobia yet are often overlooked in qualitative research into mental health and illness. This study uses discourse analysis informed by cognitive linguistics to investigate people’s experiences of a specific kind of animal phobia, that of insects and other bugs. Through an analysis of proximisation and metaphor in interviews with 27 women with these phobias, this study shows how the feared bugs are conceptualised as an outsider threat that continually encroaches upon the deictic centre of the self or the home. The narrowing of the space between the bug and the deictic centre is at once literal (i.e. the bug moves towards the self) and metaphorical, that is, the bug is conceptualised as an agent with the wilful intent to perform deliberate acts of harm on the deictic centre. The findings are discussed in relation to several socially-situated issues, namely: the nature of disgust, women’s experiences of vulnerability and violence, and the meanings created for insects and bugs through anthropomorphic discursive representations.

There has been an increased use of the term ‘mental health’ to refer to more negative states or ‘mental illness’. This study examines the language and meanings associated with ‘mental health’ in English-language newspapers across five Asian countries: Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and China. The aim is to identify the common words used to discuss mental health and to assess the extent to which these words reflect their common definitional meanings across different cultural contexts. Methodologically, the study integrates language convergence and meaning divergence approaches with corpus linguistics to analyse the newspapers. The findings reveal that ‘mental health’ is frequently collocated with words such as ‘issues’, ‘problems’, ‘services’, ‘support’, ‘physical’, and ‘people’ across the Asian news corpora. It is found that these collocates often diverge from their definitional meanings and are often used in reference to more negative mental states across the Asian news corpora.

Could grammatical variations between languages influence early language acquisition? This question has been largely overlooked, likely due to the challenges of studying it in typically developing children. By around four years of age, most typically developing children naturally acquire advanced syntactic abilities. In contrast, autistic children often face significant difficulties with language acquisition, with approximately 40 % of those diagnosed with autism never achieving full syntactic language comprehension. If grammatical differences between languages impact syntactic acquisition, autistic individuals speaking different languages could potentially display distinct syntactic development trajectories. To explore this, a longitudinal study was conducted involving children aged 2-5 years diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) who utilized a language therapy app that also gathered parent-reported language assessments. Participants were divided into groups based on their native languages: English (N = 5557), Spanish (N = 1763), Portuguese (N = 830), Italian (N = 417), and Russian (N = 313). A linear mixed-effects model with repeated measures was employed to compare each pair of language groups. The analysis revealed no significant differences in the 3-year trajectories of receptive and expressive language development between the groups. These findings suggest that all studied languages are equally effective in supporting language development.

This article presents a bibliometric analysis of research on dementia in the field of linguistics. We reviewed and analyzed 545 articles published in 89 peer-reviewed journals between 1994 and 2023, to identify key bibliometric information and major research topics in this expanding field of research. The distribution of countries indicates that the United States is the most productive country, and researchers from the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada also play an important role. Aphasiology and Brain and Language are the most influential journals in terms of research productivity and impact. The analysis of highly cited references demonstrates the intellectual foundation of this research field. The topics generated by structural topic modeling show that scholars in linguistics have responded to a variety of issues on dementia, encompassing semantic processing, multilingualism and cognitive functions, primary progressive aphasia and apraxia of speech, natural language processing techniques, the role of speech-language pathologists, communication dynamics in contexts, speech processing, syntactic processing, and word retrieval and language processing. This study aims to enhance researchers’ understanding of the current state of this research field and provide insights for future studies.

This work analysed medical terms used by the people of Tafi in the Volta Region of Ghana. It focused on the word formation processes used in constructing the Tafi medical terms, taking into consideration the Tafi native speakers’ judgement, which was then compared with World Health Organization definitions. Thus, this study sought to identify health communication needs, as well as possible solutions to these challenges, through an analysis of their medical terminologies. A list of 28 disease conditions that are of public health concern was developed using the Technical Guidelines for Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response in Ghana and the Field Epidemiology Training Programme on Investigating an Outbreak as the benchmark. Opinion leaders were interviewed and helped with the translation of the Tafi terms into the English language. The list was subsequently reviewed by a barrister. It was finally validated by a custodian. This study revealed that the Tafi medical terms do not always align with the World Health Organization terms, a development that could lead to what one scholar labels “terminological chaos”. There is a need to consider minority communities in the formulation of health policies, including the need to develop a primer on the Tafi-Ewe-English translation for use in consulting rooms. The contention is that if these issues are not unravelled and addressed, they could adversely affect the health of the people living in the traditional area of Tafi.

The rising global utilization of pesticides, organophosphates and pyrethroids, has elicited significant apprehensions regarding their possible effects on neurodevelopment, particularly in relation to language acquisition. Pesticides are acknowledged as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs); however, their precise impact on the hormonal regulation of FOXP2, a gene crucial for vocal learning and expressive language, has not been thoroughly investigated. This study seeks to systematically and critically analyze the correlation between pesticide exposure, testosterone levels, FOXP2 gene expression, and language-related outcomes, emphasizing sex-specific susceptibility. In accordance with PRISMA guidelines, 23 peer-reviewed empirical studies published from 2003 to 2024 were chosen from Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science, and ScienceDirect. A mixed-methods synthesis was executed across three domains: endocrine disruption, hormonal modulation of FOXP2, and behavioral-linguistic ramifications. The quality of the study was assessed with the ROBINS-I and SYRCLE tools, and the certainty of the evidence was assessed with a GRADE-style framework. The findings indicate that pesticide exposure is consistently linked to diminished testosterone levels, which subsequently downregulate FOXP2 expression in brain regions essential for speech. Changes in FOXP2 expression are linked to problems with expressive language and phonological errors in both humans and animals. The review differentiates between clinical impairments and subclinical variations, emphasizing limited yet significant sex-specific effects. These findings highlight the necessity for longitudinal, sex-sensitive research and enhanced public health policies to reduce developmental risks. Comprehending the impact of environmental toxins on language development is crucial for early intervention and the protection of neurocognitive outcomes.

While studies on the trustworthiness construction are increasing, the trustworthiness construction in doctor-elderly patient interactions is still under-researched. Moreover, scant attention has been paid to doctor-elderly patient interactions in Chinese village contexts. The present study investigates village doctors’ discursive strategies of trustworthiness construction by focusing on 50 cases in two villages in Zhejiang Province, China. The findings reveal that village doctors’ trustworthiness discourse can be categorized into two types: authoritative discourse and attitudinal discourse, with the former primarily realized by medical jargon, medical history narrative, normality judgement, corrections of mistaken beliefs, exhortations on behaviors, and warnings; and the latter by benevolence, integrity, attentiveness, nonmedical small talk, kinship address terms, humor, and health literacy adaptation. The study also offers culturally bound discussions to reveal the underlying factors of trustworthiness construction, which may arouse attention to the medical service needs of elderly patients, especially those in rural areas.

Dyslexia is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by difficulties in accurate and fluent word recognition, affecting reading and language acquisition. While much research has explored dyslexia in native language contexts, its impact on second language (L2) reading proficiency among university students remains underexamined, especially in multilingual settings like Bangladesh. This study aims to investigate how dyslexia affects English reading skills, particularly decoding, fluency, comprehension, and confidence, among undergraduate students at the university level in Bangladesh. Employing a mixed-methods approach, data were collected from 120 undergraduate students through standardized reading assessments and structured surveys. Additionally, 20 students diagnosed with dyslexia participated in semi-structured interviews to provide deeper qualitative insights into their lived experiences. Quantitative results indicated that dyslexic students performed significantly lower in English reading comprehension and exhibited slower reading fluency compared to their non-dyslexic peers (p < 0.01). Qualitative findings revealed that students faced difficulties decoding advanced vocabulary, experienced exam-related anxiety, and reported fluctuating confidence. Interviews also pointed to a lack of specialized support and assistive tools. These challenges span cognitive, emotional, and educational domains. The study underscores the need for early screening, inclusive teaching, and targeted interventions like structured literacy and audio-assisted tools to better support dyslexic learners and enhance English reading outcomes in multilingual contexts like Bangladesh.

The contemplation of death is for most of us inherently disconcerting, making it natural repress such an unpleasant reality both on an individual and on a societal level. Language provides us with the facility for suppression of such thoughts, achieve different outcomes and construct different realities by words chosen and their shared meanings. This paper reports the findings of a study conducted to investigate the discursive construction of palliative care in the Kenyan context. The study was conducted in four hospices in Kenya, namely Siaya, Kisumu, Busia and Eldoret. Like in many African countries, palliative care is yet to be fully integrated into the mainstream healthcare system in Kenya, and these centres, although located within the proximity or sometimes within the premises of the respective county referral hospitals, were mainly operationally autonomous. Participants were selected for the study using purposive sampling. purposively selected for the study. Data was collected over a period of six (6) months using the principles of focused ethnography and guided by the study objectives and relevant theoretical framework. The care givers were all relatives of the patients who doubled up as care givers of during the hospitalization period. The findings of this study show that the language used in palliative care contexts in Kenya varies considerably and reflects diverse conceptualizations of illness, diagnosis, treatment and death. It emerges that these conceptualizations are constrained by cultural practices, religious beliefs, speaker identity and the goals of the palliative care facility.

Words can make or break any individual. At the same time, each language and culture has its own expressions that point to the ideals of that society. The Ndebele people of Zimbabwe use linguistic expressions which bring out what the society values. Women in their natural state are part of the inventory of valued beings. Women’s health has come under risk due to the prevalence of breast cancer, which is the second most common cancer among women. One lasting solution to the condition is to have the breast amputated (mastectomy). Against this backdrop, the paper interrogates Ndebele ethnolinguistic expressions which idealise a female’s full bust thereby becoming a deterrent to breast amputation in cases of breast cancer. Zimbabwe health statistics show that there are few women who take mastectomy as a treatment option. While some of the reasons for this may be economic, there are some social reasons as well which in this case lean on the expressions of the society. Focusing on some Ndebele expressions which are found in daily speech and artistic forms like songs as a springboard, the researcher interviewed some breast cancer patients to ascertain the impact of such expressions when faced with an option of mastectomy. The paper concludes that linguistic and cultural expressions contribute negatively to the treatment behaviours and attitudes towards mastectomy among female patients in Zimbabwe.