This past week, I was standing in my local pharmacy in the Los Angeles area, chatting in English with my Mom, when a gentleman, also wearing a face-mask, urgently approached us in Spanish. Because this never really happens to us as African American women, my Mom and I were pleasantly surprised. In fact, it's more common that we're assumed to be non-Spanish-speaking. By the time we left the pharmacy, circumstances had made it clear that the man--let me refer to him as Miguel (a pseudonym)--had approached us out of necessity. He was having trouble filling out the health consent form required for getting the vaccine, and needed help. Still, we wondered if anything about our appearance or demeanor had encouraged him to seek our assistance, particularly because there were others in the area that he might have consulted instead. Maybe we just seemed friendly and least likely to judge or reject him?  

Miguel wore a baseball cap, and had a clipboard and pen in hand. He appeared kind. Walking toward us, he said: "¿Ustedes están aquí por la vacuna de covid?" (Are you here for the COVID vaccine?)

The area between us was separated by a cordon that roped off a few chairs to maintain social distancing. The chairs marked the casual perimeter of the vaccine waiting and observation area, just beyond the pharmacy's main counter and cashier desk. 

My Mom and I looked at each other, and she deferred to me. And that was when the conversational Spanish skills I learned during the year I lived in Mexico City (and which I rarely get the chance to use nowadays), kicked in. I coaxed my brain into action. "Sí, pues claro," (Yes, of course) I replied. "¿Támbien usted?" (You, too?)

Miguel was very friendly, and seemed happy to be responded to in Spanish! So, we moved closer to take in more of what he was saying. Once we were within a more audible range, he began to speak more excitedly, gesturing to the page affixed to the clipboard in his hands. My Mom and I were close enough to see he was pointing to the pharmacy's standard COVID-19 Immunization Consent Form, with questions like, "Are you sick today?" and "Have you ever fainted or felt dizzy after receiving an immunization?"

The consent form was just like the one we had completed 15 minutes earlier, except his page was printed in Spanish. Likely because we had entered the pharmacy speaking English, my Mom and I were not offered this alternative language option. Truthfully, we didn't even know that the pharmacy had Spanish-language consent forms, but the fact that they were available was a good thing. 

Miguel pointed to the Spanish-language health form on his clipboard, and continued speaking Spanish. He explained that when the pharmacist had originally given him the health form in English, he had told them he was unable to read it. And so he had been given the Spanish version. But he was having trouble understanding this form, as well. Miguel asked: ¿Me pueden ayudar? (Can you help me?)

As our conversation unfolded, there were more clues that although Miguel was able to speak Spanish, he had difficulty reading the language on the consent form. He also appeared to have difficulty with writing. 

Immediately, it struck me, based on my experience with speakers of languages other than English, that Miguel was probably multilingual in other languages, possibly Indigenous languages that he could navigate without difficulty. It was important to me to relate to him with respect for our multilingual world. But at the moment, I was faced with the challenge of figuring out how best to help him. So, what should we do when language and literacy form practical barriers to public health measures? Let me share what I was able to do...

by Jamie A. Thomas

I'm picking up the blog this month with a post that highlights how the way our bodies are read--in coordination with the languages we speak--can make for very different intersections with race and gender. How many of us think about language learning when we consider the combined impacts of racialization and gendering? How many study abroad coordinators are aware of intersectional challenges for their students of color?

Why do we forget to consider language as another dimension of our social experience? Because we take it for granted. Language is such a regularly embedded and embodied aspect of our everyday experience, we sometimes are unaware of how it can contextually shift in its use to construct ideals of woman, nation, or Arabic-speaker, for example.

The video posted below on "Study Abroad in Jordan" is my latest installment of the #LanguageStory video series, and follows two college students, Laye and Erica, in their sojourn to Amman, Jordan. I met each of them during my time as an ethnographer embedded in Jordan, and their friendship is all the more powerful considering their many differences: Laye is a first-generation Muslim immigrant to the U.S., and Erica is a White American woman with aspirations for a career in Dubai. 

It's a bit paradoxical, but the notion of language is quite often missing from discussion of how socially (and culturally) constructed categories of identity can impact our experiences. In many ways, words said and unsaid can contribute to discrimination, exclusion, and a narrowing of possibilities.  What I mean here, is that even though racialization and gendering are largely accomplished through discourse and communication, we fail to pay attention to language as a medium of exclusion, or as yet another dimension of reading a person as Other.  

​Both Erica and Laye enjoy their life abroad in Amman, Jordan, and view it as an extraordinary opportunity. Their friendship has fostered a unique brand of colloquial Arabic between them. However, as it turns out, their study abroad experiences diverge in ways that relate to how their bodies are gendered and raced by others in Amman. Across each of their experiences, language remains another dimension through which they experience difference. 

For Erica, being seen as a woman narrows her opportunities to converse with men. In her homestay situation, this also leads to marriage as the central topic of conversation. This has the effect of narrowing her potential

by Kyle Martin and Arielle Pinto
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​Kyle is a senior at Strath Haven High School looking forward to choosing a college major in the coming year.  Arielle is a junior at Haverford College, where she is a Philosophy major. Listen to their #LanguageStory here, which includes a contribution from Swarthmore College junior Erick Gutierrez.

What began as an attempt to research the semiotic landscape created by these trucks turned into an investigation of the use of the Arabic language in Philadelphia, following an interview with Mr. Amine Helali (an operator of one such truck). From here, we spoke with Professor Benjamin Smith, an Arabic professor at Swarthmore College. We asked them questions about the languages they use in different contexts, and they told us about what they gathered from their own experiences. From both of these interviews, it seemed to us that English has a considerable importance in this community.

Amine Helali is an Algerian food truck vendor who works on the Avenue of the Arts, a largely cosmopolitan, dynamic and artistic neighborhood in Center City. After reading about the French street artist JR’s mural of Ibrahim Shah, a Pakistani food truck vendor,  whose image formerly stood on one of the facades of the Graham Building in Center City[2], one of us got inspiration, and decided to further investigate the people working in this business. Amine told us about his multilingual background in Arabic, French, Spanish and English. In his work, he uses all of those languages, but for different purposes...