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In this paper I explore the relationship between culture and language stress as it is experienced by the Mali Baining people of the Gazelle Peninsula, East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea. The paper situates the discussion of language endangerment within a broader framework that describes the historical situation and current socioeconomic pressures that the Malis are seeking to overcome. The paper provides additional support for Hill's (2002) suggestion that linguists need to take a more considered approach to advocacy for endangered languages, and describes some of the strategies for language support requested by the Mali community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out criteria for dealing with homonymous and polysemous lexemes in the Sm’algyax Learners’ Dictionary. (Sm’algyax, is a member of the Tsimshianic language family located in the Pacific Northwest). Using these criteria it is possible to identify a number of one-to-many relationships between forms, grammatical classes and/or meanings. This paper identifies a number of different degrees of relatedness along the ‘polysemy continuum’; ranging from homonymy at one extreme to sense modulation at the other. Semantic relatedness and word class membership are key criteria for distinguishing between homonymy and polysemy in Sm’algyax. Sense modulation is a frequent strategy for lexical expansion in Sm’algyax; made possible by the high frequency of stems with broad semantic scope in the lexicon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia is a world leader in providing valuable resources that support multilingual access to healthcare services. However, the COVID‐19 pandemic revealed that these resources are not always effective in ensuring that linguistically diverse citizens have access to information in a crisis. In this paper, we consider whether authorities around the world have implemented effective approaches that might be adapted to enhance multilingual communications in public health crises in the Australian context. Using a systematic literature review, we identify strategies implemented by governments and public health authorities to effectively support communication in a range of languages during public health emergencies. Four databases were searched and resulting studies analysed. We found that substantial bodies of the literature document the communication needs of culturally and linguistically diverse communities and the role of community and religious organisations in providing that support. However, there is almost no attention to the role that governments or public health authorities might play in implementing strategies to address those needs. Analysis of the studies suggests that public health authorities could benefit from working more collaboratively with community organisations to establish communication strategies that are timely, trustworthy, efficient and capable of cultural and linguistic nuance in public health emergencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]