In Part 2 of the Reading Bodies takeover, Olivia Glaze considers the policy and impact potential of research on languages, identity, and culture within the medical humanities.
How does the language we use shape our understanding of illness and healthcare? And crucially, how can insights from languages research within the medical humanities guide policymakers toward more inclusive and effective healthcare policies? Such questions lie at the heart of discussions about the crucial intersection of language, identity, culture, and health policy – and their answers speak to the broader value of languages research in tackling some of society’s most pressing challenges.
As we have begun developing policy-focused outputs through the Reading Bodies project, these questions have been at the forefront of our thinking, shaping the way we have translated our research into practical tools designed to inform and influence healthcare policy. Research on languages, identity, and culture within the medical humanities is uniquely positioned to offer policymakers insights into how individuals and communities experience illness and healthcare infrastructures. Language shapes not only how illness is discussed but also how it is understood and internalised by patients and healthcare providers alike.
Studies across the languages disciplines can reveal the nuances of patient narratives, uncovering how different linguistic expressions and cultural frameworks influence the ways people describe symptoms, cope with diagnosis, and engage with medical institutions. For example, Gabriele Lucius-Hoene’s (2000) examination of how narrative identity is actively constructed through storytelling amongst German people living with chronic illness or disability, and Abir Hamdar’s investigation of the societal taboos that impact Arab women’s experiences of cancer (2021, 2024). Such research can guide policymakers toward creating more responsive healthcare policies that recognise and accommodate the diversity of patient experiences, especially for marginalised or non-dominant language groups.
As such, understanding how identity and culture intersect with medical experiences sheds light on persistent health inequalities. Cultural attitudes towards illness – ranging from stigma surrounding mental health to outdated beliefs about chronic diseases – can significantly impact an individual’s willingness to seek treatment or adhere to medical advice. Multilingual medical humanities research sheds light on these cultural undercurrents, providing policymakers with evidence to design culturally sensitive public health campaigns and interventions. It also challenges one-size-fits-all models of healthcare delivery, advocating for more tailored approaches that respect and integrate patients’ cultural backgrounds into the healthcare system.
Research in languages and cultures also offers advantageous insights on how illness is framed by language itself, exploring, among other features, metaphors that can either reinforce harmful stereotypes or foster empathy and inclusion. For example, Elena Semino (2018) has investigated how metaphors shape the way patients describe cancer and end-of-life experiences; Claudia Magnere-Maldonado (2025) has analysed interviews with Spanish women living with endometriosis, and the use of metaphors to frame chronic pain; and Sonya Pritzkers (2007) has explored heart and brain metaphors used in the meaning-making efforts of Chinese individuals diagnosed with depression.
Language research in the medical humanities can also critically examine the rhetoric employed in media, policy documents, and clinical settings, identifying ways language can inadvertently marginalise certain groups or perpetuate stigma – for example, in analyses of how the COVID-19 pandemic was discussed on Twitter (Wicke and Bolognesi 2024) or of how French newspaper reporting on AIDS shifted over time (Kim 2016). By illuminating these patterns, researchers can advise policymakers on developing communication strategies that promote dignity and equity. In an era where global health challenges demand more nuanced understandings of human diversity, integrating insights from languages, identity, and culture into policymaking is not just beneficial but essential for building more just and effective healthcare systems.
Putting policy into practice
Inspired by colleagues in the multilingual medical humanities who have effectively collaborated with policymakers – including Heike Bartel (University of Nottingham), Abir Hamdar (Durham University), and Elena Semino (Lancaster University) – the Reading Bodies project has created a new resource for healthcare practitioners aimed at improving understanding of patients’ experiences of burnout. The Burnout Booklet features ten quotations, and five accompanying illustrations by Hannah Mumby, influenced by insights from our public engagement activities and creative writing anthology Reading Bodies: Burnout, Overload and Resilience.
By analysing the metaphors and language styles used by participants within our workshops and the anthology’s thirty-seven published pieces, we identified five common themes. For each theme, we developed two quotes that best illustrated the language commonly found in our combined dataset. We hope that The Burnout Booklet will offer medical practitioners greater insight into how people linguistically express their experiences of burnout, improving both the identification of burnout and the empathy and care provided to patients. Additionally, we aim for the booklet to challenge the assumption that burnout occurs exclusively in workplace settings by highlighting its prevalence in domestic and caregiving contexts.
To make the impact of The Burnout Booklet and the Reading Bodies anthology more accessible to policymakers, we have produced concise summaries for each output, which will be featured on the Languages Research Database. This database was developed in collaboration with Wendy Ayres-Bennett and Charles Forsdick during my recent role as the UCFL & MHRA Languages and Policy Postdoctoral Researcher at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Aimed at policymakers, the database is designed to host clear and accessible summaries of languages research that demonstrate how languages contribute to addressing key societal challenges. The summary template was shaped by a six-month consultation with civil servants and policy stakeholders, which highlighted the importance of showcasing real-world impact. The Languages Research Database will be hosted on the UCFL website and is scheduled to launch in late October.
At their core, both the Reading Bodies project and the wider field of multilingual medical humanities demonstrate that language is not just a vehicle for describing illness but a central force in shaping how it is experienced, communicated, and addressed. By bringing together insights from languages research with the priorities of healthcare policy, we can foreground the lived realities of patients, while also equipping practitioners and policymakers with tools to build more inclusive and responsive systems. This intersection of language, culture, and health is where the medical humanities can make its most powerful contribution: offering evidence-based, human-centred perspectives that challenge assumptions, reduce inequalities, and support better care for all.
About the author
Olivia Glaze is a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Languages, Cultures and Society, University of London. Her fellowship is funded by an MHRA Research Scholarship in Modern European Languages. Olivia’s research explores how experiences of illness, trauma, and disability – particularly in relation to gender, empire, and conflict – are narrated across contemporary Portuguese literature, film, and visual culture. While grounded in the Portuguese-speaking world, her research engages more broadly with themes of cultural resistance, intersectional health inequalities, and the legacies of war, decolonisation, and migration. Olivia was awarded her DPhil from the University of Oxford in 2022. Since then, she has held several research positions, including Postdoctoral Research Associate on the Reading Bodies and Leading Women projects at the University of Exeter, and the UCFL & MHRA Languages and Policy Postdoctoral Researcher at the School of Advanced Study, University of London.
The Reading Bodies project has also launched a multilingual medical humanities network. For updates, follow the project on its BlueSky page.
Acknowledgements
This project is generously funded by an AHRC Research, Development and Engagement Fellowship (AH/X01133X/1) on “Reading Bodies: Narrating Illness in Spanish and European Literatures and Cultures (1870s to 1960s).”
References
Hamdar, Abir. 2021. “Staging Silence: Arab Women’s Cancer Experience.” Studies in Theatre and Performance 41 (2): 197–211. https://doi.org/10.1080/14682761.2019.1683348.
Hamdar, Abir. 2024. “Breaking Taboos: Arab Breast Cancer Activism in Art and Popular Culture.” Journal of Medical Humanities 45: 403–420. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-024-09886-6.
Kim, Young Soo. 2016. “Domestic Contexts for Response to Global HIV/AIDS in France.” International Political Science Review 37 (1): 45–60. https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2016.4.
Lucius-Hoene, Gabriele. 2000. “Constructing and Reconstructing Narrative Identity.” Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research 1 (2). https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-1.2.1087.
Magnere-Maldonado, Claudia. 2025. “Convivir con el dolor crónico: el uso de metáforas conceptuales en los relatos de mujeres con endometriosis.” Estudios Filológicos 75: 141–63. https://doi.org/10.4067/s0071-17132025000100141.
Pritzker, Sonya. 2007. “Thinking Hearts, Feeling Brains: Metaphor, Culture, and the Self in Chinese Narratives of Depression.” Metaphor and Symbol 22 (3): 251–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926480701357679.
Semino, Elena, Zsófia Demjén, Andrew Hardie, Sheila Payne, and Paul Rayson. 2018. Metaphor, Cancer and the End of Life: A Corpus-Based Study. Routledge.
Wicke, Philipp, and Marianna M. Bolognesi. 2024. “Framing COVID-19: How We Conceptualize and Discuss the Pandemic on Twitter.” PLoS One 19 (7): e0239930. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306644.
