The connection between social and emotional wellbeing and Indigenous language use varies across language ecologies in Australia

Yonatan Dinku, Francis Markham, Denise Angelo and Jane Simpson

Social Science & Medicine, 2025, vol. 364, issue C

Abstract: This research examines relationships between social and emotional wellbeing in various language ecology contexts. Previous studies have shown a correlation between speaking an Indigenous language and improved social and emotional wellbeing among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples within the population nationally. This study considers the rich variety of contemporary Indigenous language contexts and the extent to which traditional languages, new contact languages and English are spoken. It adopts the concept of ‘language ecologies’ — the different configurations of languages spoken in a location — to investigate how the relationship between Indigenous language use (traditional or new), and social and emotional wellbeing varies by ecology type. We classify the country geographically into five language ecology types, and use regression analysis to investigate associations between Indigenous language use and social and emotional wellbeing by language ecology type. We find heterogenous associations across different language ecologies Speaking an Indigenous language is associated with lower than average levels of wellbeing in areas where English is frequently spoken as a first language, while it is associated with greater than average wellbeing in other areas. Associations between wellbeing and speaking an Indigenous language are relatively larger in areas where traditional Indigenous languages are frequently spoken as a first language than in other areas. The findings suggest that the extent and type of wellbeing benefits from speaking an Indigenous language are dependent on the type of languages in individuals' language repertoires (person-based) and the language contexts where they live (place-based language ecologies).

Keywords: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples; Social and emotional wellbeing; Indigenous language use; Language ecology; Australia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953624010013
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:364:y:2025:i:c:s0277953624010013

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117547

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().