Boston Municipality COVID-19 Emergency Language Services And Crisis Communication—A Perspective From Language Management Theory

Emergency language services and crisis communication belong to the emerging fields of language policy and planning.When natural disasters,public health emergencies and other emergent situations occur,linguistically disadvantaged groups of a country（groups whose mother tongue is not the country’s official language）will face language barriers.In reality,governments,institutions,non-profit organizations and volunteers have helped linguistically disadvantaged groups overcome language barriers.Studies on emergency language services and crisis communication are still in the initial stages of development.Previous studies were mainly conducted from the perspective of language techniques and management standards of language services.The Western linguistic community has seen many studies on emergency language services,while the Chinese linguistic community mainly focuses on the construction of emergency language service system and its basic concepts,principles and methods.Several studies concentrate on how foreigners living in China overcome language barriers,yet little research has been done into language issues facing Asian immigrants in foreign countries.This paper selects Asian immigrant entrepreneurs in Boston Chinatown as a case study with three research questions:（1）How do governments,at both national and local levels,enact laws and regulations in order to make sure that linguistically disadvantaged immigrants have access to emergency language services during the COVID-19 pandemic?（2）What language barriers do Asian immigrant small business owners face?（3）What policies can be implemented to better address problems brought by emergent public events that will influence linguistic minorities’ access to language services? Research methods adopted in this study include policy comparison analysis,corpus-based critical discourse analysis and interview ethnographic analysis.Research findings are as follows.Firstly,the U.S.government enacted a series of policy documents and acts on emergency language services and the Boston government improved its local ordinances and provided language assistance for more immigrants based on previous acts and regulations.Secondly,the analysis of news reports,social media tweets and interviews of Asian immigrant entrepreneurs reveals that language barriers exist in many aspects of society,including accessing governmental documents,financial subsidy and medical services.In addition,the Boston Model of emergency language services has been discovered in which the government,media,non-profit organizations,volunteers and Asian immigrant entrepreneurs are all involved in the process of language management and realize a dynamic loop of policies,achieving desirable effects.Therefore,in the management of crisis communication,the government should keep close contact with media,local organizations and individuals so that joint efforts can be made to improve the mechanism of emergency language services and enhance crisis communication abilities.This study delves into emergency language services and crisis communication from the perspective of sociolinguistics,offering a new perspective into research on language policy and planning.