Abstract
Face, or the public self-image that each individual claims for him-/herself, is continuously constructed and negotiated in interaction. In interpreter-mediated events, the interpreter’s actions may threaten, maintain or enhance the primary participants’ face, as well as their own. This single case study of a real-life interview between a prison psychologist and a foreign language-speaking inmate, interpreted by another inmate, aims to explore how and why the three members of the triad engage in face-threatening acts (Brown and Levinson 1987) and face-boosting acts (Bayraktaroglu 1991). The transcribed audio recording of the interview shows how this non-professional interpreter actively seeks to protect and improve his fellow prisoner’s face, as a potential expression of his in-group loyalty, but ultimately prioritizes his own social image in an attempt to present himself as cooperative and trustworthy before the psychologist. This analysis shows how underlying issues of social distance, power and trust forcefully shape conversational behaviors in the prison environment.
Acknowledgements
The author is greatly indebted to two anonymous reviewers for their feedback on this article.
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© 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Articles
- Looking back: A study of (ad-hoc) family interpreters
- On professional and non-professional interpreting in healthcare services: the case of intercultural mediators
- Perceptions from the outside in cases of gender violence. ‘What are you [the interpreter] doing here?’
- City and migration: a crossroads for non-institutionalized translation
- Facing face: non-professional interpreting in prison mental health interviews
- No work and all play – the intersections between labour, fun and exploitation in online translation communities
- Some remarks on transcript translation in discourse analysis
- On AILA Europe
- ASLA: Association Suédoise de Linguistique Appliquée
- Research Projects for Europe
- The European AVIDICUS projects: Collaborating to assess the viability of video-mediated interpreting in legal proceedings
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Articles
- Looking back: A study of (ad-hoc) family interpreters
- On professional and non-professional interpreting in healthcare services: the case of intercultural mediators
- Perceptions from the outside in cases of gender violence. ‘What are you [the interpreter] doing here?’
- City and migration: a crossroads for non-institutionalized translation
- Facing face: non-professional interpreting in prison mental health interviews
- No work and all play – the intersections between labour, fun and exploitation in online translation communities
- Some remarks on transcript translation in discourse analysis
- On AILA Europe
- ASLA: Association Suédoise de Linguistique Appliquée
- Research Projects for Europe
- The European AVIDICUS projects: Collaborating to assess the viability of video-mediated interpreting in legal proceedings