A Study on the Issues and Solutions in Emergency Language Services for the Elderly in Rural Communities in China

Language has a profound impact on communication and thought for human beings. It has been instrumental in the dissemination of disaster warning and rescue information during emergencies. Due to the decline in language abilities and the physiological and social disadvantages of not keeping pace with the speed of information technology development, elderly individuals have become a vulnerable group on the linguistic level. Based on field surveys, this paper focuses on the elderly population in rural China and discusses the language barriers faced by this group in emergencies and the emergency language services they received. The research found: (1) The rural elderly’s individual language abilities are so poor that they are less able to cope with emergencies. (2) There is a pronounced barrier for the rural elderly in terms of communication and information acquisition. (3) Current rural emergency language services face issues such as limited service content, lack of professional service teams, insufficient service awareness, and an incomplete service mechanism. Based on these issues, rural emergency language services should provide differentiated services according to the linguistic characteristics of the elderly population and the actual conditions of rural communities. This involves forming specialized, localized emergency language service teams, extending the breadth and depth of emergency language services, and establishing a long-term mechanism to better protect the linguistic rights and emergency needs of the elderly.