Spatial Justice in Health Communication: Exploring Affective Responses to the Linguistic Landscape in a Shanghai International Hospital

ABSTRACT Linguistic landscape (LL), functioning as a form of health communication, offers a lens through which to examine whether the visual representation of languages in medical spaces ensures accessibility for all and communicates spatial justice. Recent studies on LL have primarily concentrated on elucidating LL as a cognitive and affective indicator of public space, with less attention to how sign‐readers affectively perceive and engage with public signage in medical and migrant contexts. Exploring sign‐readers’ affective responses to the LL can help us understand whether the spatial resources indicated by that LL meet their practical and psychological needs. This empirical study contributes to LL research by examining affective responses to the LL among immigrant patients in a Shanghai international hospital, illuminating the interactions between LL and spatial justice in a medical context. Based on 260 signs collected through photography and interviews with eight international patients, we aimed to explore their feelings and thoughts about the LL at the moment of their experience of it. After identifying various affective responses triggered by the LL, we found that the use of English in the LL projects the hospital's espoused values of “care” and “quality”, while the absence of languages such as Korean and Japanese constrains linguistic equality and spatial justice, triggering anxiety among those who speak neither English nor Mandarin. Future planning of the LL in Shanghai's international communities might be informed by a multilingual awareness to promote the subjective well‐being of transnational immigrants and to improve the epistemic diversity and inclusivity of urban spaces.