How To Serve Many Cultures—With One Common Goal.

Whether it’s best practice, common sense, or driven by regulatory compliance, having one common goal of cultural and linguistic responsiveness will make you a better practitioner to all of your clients. Your empathy and understanding will go a long way.

Here are some ways to keep yourself on track.

  • KNOW YOURSELF FIRST. No matter who you are, your personal biases can come into play. We all have them. As a professional, you must enter the relationship with awareness, knowledge, and skills about your own culture and biases, strengths, and limitations.
  • START FRESH EACH TIME. It's important to start fresh with each new engagement. Keep the lessons you've learned from your past experiences fresh in your mind, but make no assumptions about individuals—such assumptions could lead to that person experiencing misdiagnosis, improper treatment, or research bias. Even if clients are from the same part of the world or speak the same language as you, take time to know the individual client and their overall situation.
  • LANGUAGE MATTERS. In the 1920s, Coca-Cola® entered the market in China but struggled to succeed there. They found out that their product name translated to "bite the wax tadpole" in Chinese, confusing and alienating customers. This example shows how certain words and language choices that some people think are "commonly understood" and "widely accepted" common may actually be unfamiliar, misunderstood, inappropriate—and even offensive—to some individuals.
  • KNOW YOUR EXPERTISE. Multilingual clients/patients/students require linguistically relevant clinical services. Clinicians may collaborate with interpreters and transliterators. Multilingual audiologists and speech-language pathologists must be able to speak or sign the language of the client, family, or research participants. Multilingual service providers need to have a deep understanding of their language(s) in the following domains during clinical management and conduct of research.
    • lexicon (vocabulary)
    • semantics (meaning)
    • phonology (pronunciation)
    • morphology/syntax (grammar)
    • pragmatics (uses)
  • DIG DEEP INTO THE TOOLBOX. Your goal is to provide the best possible care—even when it's new to you. Consult with other professionals and mentors, and take advantage of every available resource. A spirit of understanding—combined with ongoing lifelong learning—is a critical step in ensuring high-quality service delivery.

Learn more about the ASHA Code of Ethics and how the code speaks to cultural and linguistic competence.

ASHA's Code of Ethics Cultural and Linguistic Competence