Language and culture in speech-language and hearing professions in South Africa: Re-imagining practice.
Katijah Khoza-Shangase, Munyane Mophosho
PMID 34082547WHAT IT FOUND
South African speech therapists and audiologists are urged to abandon Eurocentric training and adopt Afrocentric, culturally responsive practices.
The paper argues that language mismatches and structural inequalities currently hinder effective patient care and demands curriculum reform.
Key findings
01There is a significant demographic mismatch between practitioners and patients, with only approximately 5% of registered practitioners being black African language speakers in a country where over 70% of the population speaks an African language as their first language.
02The authors recommend that training institutions actively decolonise the curriculum by integrating African epistemologies and ensuring that assessment and intervention resources are linguistically and culturally appropriate, rather than simply translated.
03The Health Professions Council of South Africa has released guidelines requiring contextual relevance and epistemic disobedience in practice, but the authors argue these are not being enforced and call for mandatory inclusion of critical diversity literacy in clinical training.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
This is an opinion-based review and call to action, not an empirical study. It reports no original data on patient outcomes or treatment efficacy. The arguments are specific to the South African socio-political context and may not directly translate to other countries with different demographic or historical backgrounds. The paper relies heavily on citing other authors' opinions and existing guidelines rather than presenting new evidence.
Declared interests
No specific conflicts of interest or funding sources are declared in the provided text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret this paper as evidence that specific decolonised interventions have been tested and proven effective. It is a theoretical and advocacy piece calling for a change in practice and curriculum, but it does not report clinical trial results or outcome data for the proposed changes.