Rebecca Tipton

Reflexivity and the social construction of identity in interpreter-mediated asylum interviews

Abstract Drawing on the work of Anthony Giddens (1976, 1984) this paper examines the notion of ‘reflexivity’ in human conduct and the difficulty in accounting for such conduct in interpreter-mediated encounters. The discussion is framed around narrative performance in asylum-seeker encounters, since it is within this particular context that the problem of the ‘reflexive agent’ is arguably thrown into sharpest relief, in contrast to other public service interpreting contexts. The focus is placed on the reflexive practices deployed by all parties to the encounter in order to ascertain the extent to which such practices impact on the applicant’s ability to assert his or her status as a ‘knowledgeable agent’ and promote his or her ‘authentic voice’ in the telling process. The account lays particular emphasis on the difficulties involved in unearthing and assessing motivation of human action as a reflexively and discursively-realized phenomenon, and ends with a call for the use of more forensically-oriented analytic practices in this context.

Relationships of learning between military personnel and interpreters in situations of violent conflict: Dual pedagogies and communities of practice

Abstract This article explores the nature of the learning and learning relationships that emerge between civilian interpreters (most of them recruited locally) and military personnel in situations of violent conflict, with specific reference to the conflict in Iraq. The decision to focus on civilian linguists stems from particular ethical, cultural and professional issues raised by their involvement in such situations and the fact that those issues have yet to be fully explored by the academy. The discussion is premised on the notion of ‘horizontal learning’ according to which learners do not acquire a body of facts about the world, but instead develop understandings of how to ‘be’ in a world in flux. Under such a premise, the concept of ‘teacher’ does not exist and the potential for ‘dual pedagogies’ therefore emerges. The article considers the potential for the development of identifiable inter- and intra-professional communities of practice as a way to foster informed approaches to interpreter-mediated activities and also to serve as a framework for the evaluation and sense-making of interpreter-mediated activities in the field, against the backdrop of the increasing professionalization of conflict in the modern world.

Translation, ethics and social responsibility

The third Cross-Cultural Pragmatics at a Crossroads conference at the University of East Anglia in 2013 included a strand on ‘Professional Mediation’, in which the theme of social responsibility em...

Contracts and capabilities:: public service interpreting and third sector domestic violence services

ABSTRACT This article evaluates the role played by professional and non-professional volunteer interpreters in the care trajectories and institutional itineraries of survivors of domestic abuse in the third sector and is informed by Martha C. Nussbaum’s capabilities approach to contractarian theory. Reporting on a case study involving an organisation in the North West of England, it sheds light on how interpreter provision supports survivors in converting capabilities into effective social participation, and the extent to which survivors are able to influence the initial contract position in relation to language services provision. It finds that rather than being used as a replacement for professional interpreting, nonprofessional volunteer interpreters support survivors in ways that help them to achieve a range of service outcomes. Further, it finds that the evolving contractual relation places demands on professional interpreters to limit their role in interaction as the service user prepares to move on independently. I conclude that the capabilities approach provides a useful theoretical lens for examining service user empowerment in multilingual service spaces, especially in light of recently observed failings in rights-based approaches to interpreting and translation provision. The approach widens the debate about what constitutes socially responsible language services provision in this setting.

Investigating intersubjectivity as a discursive accomplishment in relation to interpreter mediation : building a conceptual and analytical framework

This article explores the problem of intersubjectiv e understanding in interpreter mediation as an emergent process in ord er to illuminate the gaps and slippages that occur at the interface where differe nt professions meet in providing service delivery to service users with a limited li nguistic capacity for dealing with complex institutional contexts. Building on a small study of interpreter and service provider perceptions of the occupational ot her (Tipton 2012), the article considers a range of sites where intersubjective un derstanding can be discursively accomplished (e.g. service encounters and research interviews) and the conceptual and methodological implications of such sites for evaluating reflexive orientations to other at the level of service deliv ery. Investigating intersubjectivity as a discursive acc omplishment in relation to interpreter mediation: building a conceptual and analytical framework Research into Public Service Interpreting is a rel tively new but growing sub-field within Translation and Interpreti ng Studies. It has emerged as a result of the complex social needs pre ent d by migrant flows, particularly towards countries in the West i n recent decades, and the need to assess institutional responses to the socia l and legal imperatives such flows generate. Analyses of interaction in the triadic constellation of Investigating intersubjectivity as a discursive acc omplishment in relation to interpreter mediation: building a conceptual and analytical framework 220 interpreter, service user, and primary service prov ider, and the relationship between this micro level of interaction and wider i nst tutional and social life, continue to illuminate the thorny issues invo lved in service delivery to vulnerable groups such as equality of access, quali ty of service, institutional power relations and, more generally, human communication in a highly mediated form. At a broad level, this work is concerned with the p otential for this form of mediated interaction to shed light on the w ays in which individuals adjust to change in human services contexts and iss ues of ‘otherorientedness’ in human-to-human communication. Ina smuch as interpreter mediation purports to serve a positive communicativ e function and appears as an unproblematic mechanism of intercultural comm unication, it generates disruption and a form of ‘cognitive disso nance’ in the workplace that service providers are often left to manage wit hou a coherent framework for doing so. In human services contexts where multiagency appro aches to service delivery have become established practice ( cf. Easen et al. 2000 for a discussion of the British context), service p roviders such as nurses, social workers, and police officers are increasingl y called upon to reflexively manage their practice at the local leve and navigate their way through the challenges to professional territory pr esented by the incoming ‘occupational other’. Although interpreter mediatio n presents a substantively different range of issues, service pr oviders nevertheless need to develop skills that allow them to consciously attend to the disruption and dissonance these issues entail. Ascertaining th e nature of these skills and the ways in which they may be developed is a lo nger-term goal of research in this area that seeks explicit grounding in ‘an ethics of practical relevance’ (following Sarangi and Roberts 1999: 2); that is, research with service providers that can lead to enhanced practic e and understanding. Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Li ngu stics 221 The focus of this article is on perceptions of the professional interculture formed each time the triadic constella ion is generated, and the practical and theoretical complexities these percep tions pose for investigating intersubjective understanding as a ‘d iscursive accomplishment’. Intersubjective understanding is v iewed as an emergent process that takes account of more than an individu al’s ability to monitor self and other during interaction, and encompasses wider understandings of institutional and professional roles, discourses and values that may or may not be discursively revealed in situ. As such, it can be considered from the perspective of mutual understanding obtain ed between occupational groups at the macro level, and between individual representatives of occupational groups at the micro level of interaction, although the risk of over-essentialising occupation al groups is acknowledged. The multilevel perspective set out above presents particular methodological challenges for the researcher in ter ms of locating the sites where intersubjective understanding emerges and the type of approach best suited to its analysis. In this article, the notion of ‘discursive accomplishment’ is widened to incorporate notions o f ‘discursive construction’ as a means to illuminate intersubject ivity as a process that occurs both inside and outside of the interactive p rocess. It draws on other work (Tipton 2012) in which sites of interaction su ch as research interviews, are used to explore perceptual frames constructed by interpreters and primary service providers and thei r potential influence on the interculture generated as their two worlds inte rpenetrate. This article develops the insights gained through research interviews about macro level perceptions, by consid ering the difficulties in incorporating such insights into micro level analys is of talk in situ. One such difficulty concerns the problem of ‘voice’ in terpreter-mediated interaction. Finally, the article explores the use of conversation analytical methods in the analysis of intersubjectivity-as-pro cess, drawing on studies Investigating intersubjectivity as a discursive acc omplishment in relation to interpreter mediation: building a conceptual and analytical framework 222 involving monolingual service encounters as a means of contrast with interpreter-mediated encounters. Perceptual frames: insights and methodological limi tations In the field of Interpreting Studies, research on perception has long been employed as a method of triangulation to explo re the gaps between what interpreters say they do and what they actuall y do in practice (e.g. Anderson 1976; Angelelli 2004). In the investigatio n f wider workplace phenomena, this type of data also allows insight in to the loose macro level structures that impact, although not determine, int erpreter-mediated encounters and that are generated through the value s, attitudes, knowledge and power bases held by individuals, but that are n ot necessarily directly observable in situated interaction. The truth claim s that inhere in such accounts of perception, however, need to be treated with caution in terms of their explanatory power, which is why they are c onsidered as part of a wider analytical process. The discursive accomplishment of intersubjective u nderstanding presupposes that the inner intentions and motivatio ns of interactants can somehow be made available through talk. Notwithstan ding the philosophical and psychological issues this raises about the relationship between language and knowledge, in interpreter medi ation the problem takes on a very practical form due to the nature of communication. This is brought into relief when contrasted with discourse exchanges that do not involve interpreter mediation. For instance, as Gum perz (1999: 455) observes in relation to in-depth discourse analyses of situated performances ‘[m]ore often than not participants’ d efinition of what the relevant event is and what it means in an encounter emerges in and through the performance itself’. In interpreter-med iated encounters, there is very limited scope for interpreters and primary service providers to verbalise and negotiate a shared definition of the ‘rel vant event’ and its related subcomponents in interaction with a minorit y speaking service Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Li ngu stics 223 user; in fact, shared definitions of the relevant e vent have to be assumed to a large extent, otherwise communication would colla pse. While such assumptions may not materially affect th e outcome of the encounter, it nevertheless suggests that a weak er level of intersubjective understanding between the interpret er and primary service provider is generated than might otherwise be obtai ned. Furthermore, although the interpreter arguably is unconcerned wi th defining the ‘relevant event’ (i.e. service user needs), since t his lies within the realm of the primary service provider as the knowledgeable e xpert in the domain (cf. Corsellis 2008), he or she is nevertheless cal led upon to reflect the primary service provider’s definition of the releva nt event. This process depends on a considerable convergence of sense-maki ng (contextualisation) processes and a deeper level of intersubjective understanding than is perhaps assumed. An analytical focus on perceptions of the occupati onal other that develop beyond (i.e. prior and subsequent to) inter ac ion allows some account to be taken of the individual’s sociocultur al and sociohistorical positioning vis-à-vis the occupational other. This is because the processes of perception-making and perception-giving permit t he articulation of connections, understandings, influences and assumpt ions about the professional self and significant workplace others (colleagues and service users) in ways that are not publicly available in f ace-to-face interpretermediated interaction. Perhaps more importantly, the y allow for perceptions to be articulated in the context of a particular ti me-space continuum: the here-and-now and recent or distant past, but also i n ways that reflect changes over time. It is posited that for an indivi dual to consciously enhance intersubjective understanding, taking accou nt f the self (and other) as a socioculturally and sociohistorically-s ituated being is warranted. In practical terms, this mi