台灣南部醫療人員台語使用與能力之社會語言學調查

With questionnaires, this study investigated factors affecting medical professionals' self-report of their Taiwanese proficiency and its use with their parents. Three main findings were shown based on responses by 1,149 physicians and nurses from three healthcare units in Southern Taiwan. Age is the most important factor for Taiwanese proficiency and frequency of use with parents, and gender a more important one than profession category. Profession category and the level of healthcare units are reflective of age, gender, and socioeconomic factors. Female nurses in healthcare stations tend to underestimate their Taiwanese proficiency while female physicians tend to overestimate. The former is related to nurses' ＂relative sense of Taiwanese non-authenticity＂ from their working environment, and the latter to physicians' acknowledgement of the rising value of ＂speaking Taiwanese as being advocates of multilingualism and patient-centeredness.＂ This linguistic insecurity observed in the two female groups reflects their alignment with the value of Taiwanese in Southern Taiwan. These findings suggest that language demand in geriatric long-term care might be the solution to reboot Taiwanese vitality.