ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought issues related to linguistic diversity in disaster and emergency communication to the fore like never before. Linguistic minorities are widely excluded from timely high-quality information related to disaster preparation, response and recovery. This chapter provides an overview of research into the communication experiences of linguistically diverse populations as they seek access to health-related information during the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter first reviews the emerging research by focusing on the key communication challenges worldwide relating to offering information in a sufficient number of languages, overcoming English-centric multilingualism, enhancing multilingual service provision and performing appropriate affective repertoires. Drawing from the efforts and strategies of diverse social actors in a variety of networks, the chapter focuses on Chinese research to elaborate how China’s emergency language services collaborate with various stakeholders and create social impacts and effective responses. By framing emergency language services as a range of collaborative assemblages across time and space, the chapter contributes to diversifying the knowledge base of multilingual crisis communication from Chinese epistemologies. The chapter closes with practical implications for enacting effective multilingual communication for future disaster preparation.
