Welcome to the new Health Semiotics Special Interest Group created under the auspices of ASFLA Inc at its AGM in July 2024.

Contact: Alison Moore | University of Wollongong | amoore@uow.edu.au.

An initial SIG meeting will soon be convened to gather those interested and set collective goals. Look out for an invitation on asflanet and sysfling email groups. Meanwhile, below are some thoughts about how the SIG will contribute to ASFLA’s broader mission.

The purpose of the ASFLA Health Semiotics SIG is to build connection and capacity among researchers engaged in or interested in health discourse, and to promote the role of linguistic inquiry in “ensuring health and wellbeing for all”[1] via clinical, policy, curriculum and/or other cultural transformation.

The group welcomes scholars with SFL or other social linguistic/social semiotic backgrounds as well as people engaged in the health sector as clinicians, patients, advocates, and/or in other roles who wish to explore health concerns through a discursive or semiotic lens. International members are welcome and there is no need to have a focus on health or healthcare in Australia.

A major objective could be to co-ordinate research activities and different sets of methodological expertise among SFL community members already working on health-related topics. A second objective could be to align goals and activities more fruitfully around ‘shared problematics’ that are highly salient to people with health concerns, workers, institutions and funding bodies within the health sector – including critical engagement.

Potential activities could include:

• scholarly meetings
• skillshare and capacity building events
• mentoring/clinical networking arrangements,
• journal club
• special issues/edited volumes
• collaborative research proposals and funding submissions
• curriculum design projects.

[1] UN SDG 3 – https://jointsdgfund.org/sustainable-development-goals/goal-3-good-health-and-well-being.