Abstract
This paper explores linguistic and cultural complexity within immigration legal advice communication. Drawing from a linguistic ethnographic study, ethnographic and interactional data from two linked advice meetings about UK refugee family reunion processes are subject to deductive analysis using Risager’s model of the language-culture nexus, within which the intersection of language(s) and culture(s) in a communicative event is conceptualised as a nexus of linguistic, languacultural, discursive, and other (non-linguistic) cultural resources and practices. The paper operationalises this intercultural communication theory in a new and exploratory way to investigate how cultural complexity is manifest, and interactionally managed, at different levels of meaning.
The substantive analysis shows how a range of divergent resources, brought in by the different participants, are drawn upon and externalised as communicative practices in both legal advice meetings. Understanding is negotiated interculturally at different levels of meaning – the linguistic, the languacultural, and the discursive – in contrasting ways in each meeting. Methodologically, the paper argues that a strength of Risager’s framework is that it supports a methodical and structured analysis of communicative events characterised by linguistic and cultural complexity, which can be linked to other discourse analytical approaches. The model’s complexity, and its foregrounding of verbal over other semiotic modes, are highlighted as challenges for the analyst.
Funding statement: This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, (Funder Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000269, Grant Number: ES/S010912/1) and Arts and Humanities Research Council, (Funder Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000267, Grant Number: 1494314).
Appendix
TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS
(adapted from Copland and Creese 2015)
Speakers are Int=Interpreter; J=Julia; K=Khalid; S=Steve; R=Researcher.
- ,
continuing contour (intonation which demonstrates speech is continuing)
- ?
questioning intonation
- here
emphasis
- (xxx)
unintelligible
- (seems)
unclear, best guess at what was said
- ((xyz))
other details including paralinguistic features and other noises
- [
overlapping speech
- °utterance°
utterance spoken more softly than surrounding utterances
- >utterance<
utterance spoken more quickly than surrounding utterances
- ↓
fall in pitch
- ↑
rise in pitch
- (.)
micropause
- (..)
pause of around 0.5 seconds
- (…)
pause of around 1 second
- (3)
longer pause or silence (number represents duration in seconds)
- :
sound stretching
- -
cut off word (part of word only spoken)
- =
latching
- @
laughter
References
Ahmad, Muneer. 2007. Interpreting communities: Lawyering across language difference. UCLA Law Review 54(5). 999–1086.Search in Google Scholar
Baynham, Mike, John Callaghan, Jolana Hanusova, Emilee Moore & James Simpson. 2018. Translanguaging immigration law: A legal advice drop-in service. Working Papers in Translanguaging and Translation No. 33. Retrieved from https://tlang.org.uk/working-papers/Search in Google Scholar
Beswick, Jacob 2015. Not so straightforward: The need for qualified legal support in refugee family reunion. London: British Red Cross. https://www.redcross.org.uk/-/media/documents/about-us/research-publications/refugee-support/not-so-straightforward-refugee-family-reunion-report-2015.pdfSearch in Google Scholar
Binder, David, Paul Bergman, Susan Price & Paul Tremblay. 1991. Lawyers as counselors: A client-centered approach. 2nd edn. St Paul, MN: West Publishing Co.Search in Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2001. Investigating narrative inequality: African asylum seekers’ stories in Belgium. Discourse & Society 12(4). 413–449.10.1177/0957926501012004002Search in Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2009. Language, asylum, and the national order. Current Anthropology 50(4). 415–441.10.1086/600131Search in Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan, James Collins & Stefaan Slembrouck. 2005. Spaces of multilingualism. Language and Communication 25(3 SPEC. ISS.). 197–216.10.1016/j.langcom.2005.05.002Search in Google Scholar
Bogoch, Bryna. 1994. Power, distance and solidarity: Models of professional-client interaction in an Israeli legal aid setting. Discourse & Society 5(1). 65–88.10.1177/0957926594005001004Search in Google Scholar
Bryant, Susan. 2001. The five habits: Building cross-cultural competence in lawyers. Clinical Law Review 8(1). 33–108.Search in Google Scholar
Canagarajah, Suresh. 2014. Theorizing a competence for translingual practice at the contact zone. In Stephen May (ed.), The multilingual turn: implications for SLA, TESOL and bilingual education, 78–102. New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Carver, Natasha. 2014. Displaying genuineness: cultural translation in the drafting of marriage narratives for immigration applications and appeals. families, Relationships and Societies 3(2). 271–286.10.1332/204674313X669937Search in Google Scholar
Codó, Eva & Maria Rosa Garrido. 2010. Ideologies and practices of multilingualism in bureaucratic and legal advice encounters. Sociolinguistic Studies 4(2). 297–332.10.1558/sols.v4i2.297Search in Google Scholar
Copland, Fiona & Angela Creese. 2015. Linguistic ethnography: Collecting, analysing and presenting data. London: SAGE.10.4135/9781473910607Search in Google Scholar
Coupland, Justine (ed.). 2000. Small talk. Harlow, London, New York: Longman.Search in Google Scholar
Dieckmann, Cristy & Isolda Rojas-Lizana. 2016. The pragmatics of legal advice services in a community legal centre in Australia: Domination or facilitation. The International Journal of speech, Language and the Law 23(2). 167–193.10.1558/ijsll.v23i2.20291Search in Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 1992. Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press.Search in Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart. 1997. Representations: Cultural representations and signifying practices. London: SAGE.Search in Google Scholar
Hammersley, Martyn. 2010. Reproducing or constructing? Some questions about transcription in social research. Qualitative Research 10(5). 553–569.10.1177/1468794110375230Search in Google Scholar
Hannerz, Ulf. 1992. Cultural complexity: Studies in the social organization of meaning. New York: Columbia University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Home Office. 2017. UK Immigration Statistics Oct-Dec 2016 - Family. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-october-to-december-2016/family (accessed 18 March 2017).Search in Google Scholar
Home Office. 2018. Immigration Rules part 11: Asylum. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/immigration-rules/immigration-rules-part-11-asylum (accessed 7 December 2018).Search in Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell. 1996. Ethnography, linguistics, narrative inequality: Towards an understanding of voice. London: Taylor & Francis.Search in Google Scholar
James, Wendy. 2008. Sudan: Majorities, minorities, and language interactions. In Andrew Simpson (ed.), Language and national identity in Africa, 61–78. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Komter, Martha. 2006. Talk and text: The relationship between spoken interaction and written documentation in legal settings (Introduction to special issue). Research on Language and Social Interaction 39(3). 195–200.10.1207/s15327973rlsi3903_1Search in Google Scholar
Kramsch, Claire & Anne Whiteside. 2008. Language ecology in multilingual settings. Towards a theory of symbolic competence. Applied Linguistics 29(4). 645–671.10.1093/applin/amn022Search in Google Scholar
Linell, Per. 2010. Communicative activity types as organisations in discourses and discourses in organisations. In Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen, Marja-Liisa Helasvuo, Marjut Johansson & Mia Raitaniemi (eds.), Discourses in interaction, 33–60. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.10.1075/pbns.203.05linSearch in Google Scholar
Maley, Yon, Christopher Candlin, Jonathan Crichton & Pieter Koster. 1995. Orientations in lawyer-client interviews. Forensic Linguistics 2(1). 42–55.10.1558/ijsll.v2i1.42Search in Google Scholar
Maryns, Katrijn. 2006. The asylum speaker: Language in the Belgian asylum procedure. Manchester: St Jerome Press.Search in Google Scholar
Maryns, Katrijn & Jan Blommaert. 2002. Pretextuality and pretextual gaps: On de/refining linguistic inequality. Pragmatics 12. 11–30.10.1075/prag.12.1.02marSearch in Google Scholar
Masson, Judith. 2012. “I think I do have strategies”: Lawyers’ approaches to parent engagement in care proceedings. Child and Family Social Work 17(2). 202–211.10.1111/j.1365-2206.2012.00829.xSearch in Google Scholar
Meeuwis, Michael. 1994. Leniency and testiness in intercultural communication: Remarks on ideology and context in interactional sociolinguistics. Pragmatics 4(3). 391–408.10.1075/prag.4.3.04meeSearch in Google Scholar
Pavlenko, Aneta. 2018. Superdiversity and why it isn’t: Reflections on terminological innovation and academic branding. In Barbara Schmenk, Stefan Breidbach & Lutz Küster (eds.), Sloganization in language education discourse: Conceptual thinking in the age of academic marketization, 142–168. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.10.21832/9781788921879-009Search in Google Scholar
Pike, Karl, Vanessa Cowan, Olivia Field & Joe Potter 2016. How reuniting families can provide solutions to the refugee crisis. London: British Red Cross. https://www.redcross.org.uk/-/media/documents/about-us/research-publications/refugee-support/rfr-designed-briefing-july-2016.pdfSearch in Google Scholar
Reynolds, Judith. 2018. Multilingual and intercultural communication in and beyond the UK asylum process: a linguistic ethnographic case study of legal advice-giving across cultural and linguistic borders. Doctoral thesis, Durham University, UK.Search in Google Scholar
Risager, Karen. 2006. Language and culture: Global flows and local complexity. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.10.21832/9781853598609Search in Google Scholar
Sarat, Austin & William Felstiner. 1995. Divorce attorneys and their clients: Power and meaning in the legal process. New York: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Saville-Troike, Muriel. 1989. The ethnography of communication: An introduction. 2nd edn. Blackwell: Oxford.Search in Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2003. Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language and Communication 23(3–4). 193–229.10.1016/S0271-5309(03)00013-2Search in Google Scholar
Slembrouck, Stefaan. 2011. Globalization theory and migration. In Ruth Wodak, Barbara Johnstone and Paul E. Kerswill (eds.), The SAGE handbook of sociolinguistics, 153–164. London, Thousand Oaks CA: SAGE.10.4135/9781446200957.n12Search in Google Scholar
Streeck, Jurgen, Charles Goodwin & LeBaron Curtis. 2011. Embodied interaction in the material world: An introduction. In Jurgen Streeck, Charles Goodwin & Curtis LeBaron (eds.), Embodied interaction: Language and body in the material world, 1–26. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Trinch, Shonna. 2001. The advocate as gatekeeper: The limits of politeness in protective order interviews with Latina survivors of domestic abuse. Journal of Sociolinguistics 5(4). 475–506.10.1111/1467-9481.00161Search in Google Scholar
Trinch, Shonna. 2005. Acquiring authority through the acquisition of genre: Latinas, intertextuality and violence. International Journal of speech, Language and the Law 12(1). 19–48.10.1558/sll.2005.12.1.19Search in Google Scholar
United Nations General Assembly. 1948. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/Search in Google Scholar
Wei, Li. 2011. Moment analysis and translanguaging space: Discursive construction of identities by multilingual Chinese youth in Britain. Journal of Pragmatics 43(5). 1222–1235.10.1016/j.pragma.2010.07.035Search in Google Scholar
Wortham, Stanton & Angela Reyes. 2015. Discourse analysis beyond the speech event. London, New York: Routledge.10.4324/9781315735207Search in Google Scholar
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Interpreting profanity in police interviews
- Investigating the language-culture nexus in refugee legal advice meetings
- A local discursive dimension in a specific historical context: Students’ narratives of police experiences during South Africa’s #FeesMustFall protests
- A weave of symbolic violence: dominance and complicity in sociolinguistic research on multilingualism
- Transnational Sri Lankan Sinhalese family language policy: Challenges and contradictions at play in two families in the U.S.
- Review
- A Review on Contra Instrumentalism: A Translation Polemic by Lawrence Venuti
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Interpreting profanity in police interviews
- Investigating the language-culture nexus in refugee legal advice meetings
- A local discursive dimension in a specific historical context: Students’ narratives of police experiences during South Africa’s #FeesMustFall protests
- A weave of symbolic violence: dominance and complicity in sociolinguistic research on multilingualism
- Transnational Sri Lankan Sinhalese family language policy: Challenges and contradictions at play in two families in the U.S.
- Review
- A Review on Contra Instrumentalism: A Translation Polemic by Lawrence Venuti