I joined Healthwatch Essex in January this year as a Research Officer, but my background is in linguistics. Although health and social care research in a charity setting is very different, the research values and methods I learned doing research in linguistics are also important in research here at Healthwatch Essex. Here, I reflect on my experience working between these two fields.
I finished my PhD in linguistics just over a year ago. Linguistics is essentially the study of how language works, but my undergraduate and Masters degrees had focused particularly on sociolinguistics. In sociolinguistics, we study things like accents and dialects, and we’re particularly interested in the social aspects of language, like how people make judgements about others based on how they talk. I was especially interested in people’s voice quality, which is essentially the distinctive sound of someone’s voice – whether it has a creaky, harsh, breathy or whispery quality. My PhD research looked at whether accents in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and the northern isles of Orkney and Shetland had distinctive voice qualities, and whether voice quality was different in older people and younger people, as well as in men and women. Most of this was quite large-scale – I looked at the voices of nearly a hundred people and took acoustic measurements from the sound waves of their voices to compare them to each other.
But I always felt that this quantitative, large-scale approach was only part of the story. Because of this, I also did an in-depth case study with a trans woman called Carrie who used her voice a lot – as a radio host, and as the lead singer of her rock band. I still took acoustic measurements, but I also interviewed Carrie about how she used her voice in different contexts. I was interested in her perspective on how she used her voice, how she felt about it, and how she felt other people perceived it. In this interview, she talked about really loving her voice and using it on stage and on the radio, but feeling out of control in more day-to-day settings. She told me about a time when someone on the phone refused to believe that she was who she said she was, just because her voice didn’t match up with how they expected. She found people reacted differently to her after hearing her voice – and this led to her being worried about speaking on public transport and in places like changing rooms or toilets. She had previously been to a speech and language therapist for voice coaching, but she had felt like they had only been able to teach how to do a very specific type of voice, which she said made her sound like a children’s TV presenter – and it didn’t help her navigate all the different situations in her life that she needed to use her voice. My research questions didn’t directly relate to health and social care, but the experience of doing this research led to me becoming more interested in this area – Carrie’s insights on her experience with speech and language therapy, for example, could be of interest to voice coaches and speech and language therapists who interested in using service users’ experiences to shape their practice.
When I interviewed Carrie, I was interested in understanding her perspective on her experiences, and this is also the case in the research that goes on at Healthwatch Essex. I’m particularly interested in using qualitative methods, where we gather and explore non-numerical data such as interviews, observations, or photographs to try and understand the ‘why’ behind things that are going on. It can often help to explain what’s going on in terms of wider quantitative trends. A good example of this is Healthwatch Essex’s ongoing project on women’s experiences living with multiple long-term conditions, led by Lorna Orriss-Dib. Much of the previous research in this area had been quantitative, and it had revealed that women, Black people, older people, and people from areas of deprivation are at increased risk of developing multiple long-term conditions. By taking a qualitative focus, Lorna is hoping to learn about women’s experiences of getting diagnoses, interactions with services, and self-management strategies – this may give insight into what areas of services could be improved, and may even suggest reasons why some of these health inequalities exist in the first place.
Because of this qualitative focus, many of the skills that I gained through working in linguistics are still relevant in this role. For example, I’m likely to need to interview people for a research project – this will involve coming up with questions that are sensitive to the fact that people may be talking about difficult or personal topics, as well as creating an environment where people feel comfortable sharing their experiences. Analysing the interviews will also involve using skills I developed working in linguistics, as I’ll need to look at transcripts in detail for themes that arise over the course of an interview and across interviews with different participants.
As I think about possible future projects, I’m excited to be able to use some of these skills on a topic related to health and social care. As I get to know more about the field, I’m starting to see more links between linguistics and projects at Healthwatch Essex. For example, a recent report by Healthwatch Essex on voluntary and community services supporting people with COPD in North East Essex discussed how refugees and asylum seekers in Essex face challenges communicating with healthcare providers due to language barriers and lack of access to translators – this insight could be an interesting starting point for future research in linguistics. I would encourage anyone working in academic research to actively engage with research going on in the charity sector. Academic researchers could learn a lot from the community engagement work going on in the charity sector, and both academic and charity research can benefit from collaboration across sectors.
Dr Joe Pearce, Research Officer