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Investigating the language-culture nexus in refugee legal advice meetings

  • Judith Reynolds ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: January 11, 2020

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

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Published Online: 2020-01-11
Published in Print: 2020-07-26

© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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