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<P><FONT FACE="Arial">This is an extremely interesting topic and likely to be a productive one.</FONT>
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<P><FONT FACE="Arial">The phenomenon of scribes-for-hire is probably current wherever societies have a sort of literacy diglossia--with persisting categories of people who are or are not literate. Forty years ago there were such specialists in India in both urban and rural areas. I have no idea of how competent the practitioners may have been. If letters were putatively written and no response ever received did the hopeful sender and hirer of a letter writer blame the scribe? the addressee of the letter? Fate?</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Arial">I would hazard that there is stuff on letter-writers in some of the South Asia or more generally comparative social science literatures--possibly in places such as the<U> Journal of Asian Studies</U> or<U> Comparative Studies in Society and History</U>. Similarly, in other region-focused literatures.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Arial">A productive place to look for possible leads is in the stuff on the roles/functions, etc., of translator-interpreters. R. Bruce W. Anderson wrote some pioneering stuff on this in the 1960s (e.g., "On the comparability of meaningful stimuli in cross-cultural research,"</FONT><U> <FONT FACE="Arial">Sociometry</FONT></U><FONT FACE="Arial">, 30, 1967). Anderson's point is straightforward and persuasive. If there are two<B><I> true</I></B><I></I> monolinguals and a competent bilingual interpreter, the interpreter may be in a position of very considerable power. There are, of course, manifold complications, as when one of the putative monolinguals actually has non-trivial competence in the other monolingual's language. Many of us believed that this was often the case when American officials interacted with supposed monolinguals who actually knew more than minimal English (with the usual caveats about differences in productive and receptive competences). </FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Arial">Anderson had other pieces on the topic. Cicourel's notion of interpretive procedures may be helpful here--where quite different cultural surrounds may be affect all the participants in the four person chain of a letter for hire (sender, receiver, and two scribes). I've dealt with some of these and related complexities in some of my writing over the years. I'd be happy to send your student a vita and note some stuff which might be helpful.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Arial">There are other interesting dimensions. Letter</FONT><I> <FONT FACE="Arial">are</FONT></I><FONT FACE="Arial"> personal--</FONT><B></B><B><I><FONT FACE="Arial">for literates</FONT></I></B><I></I><FONT FACE="Arial">. But what about the circumstance of injured military casualties. I don't know about more recent wars but in WW II volunteers often wrote letters for disabled military personnel.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Arial">Your student has hit upon a rich topic. I hope she will be encouraged to work on it.</FONT>
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<P><FONT FACE="Arial">If you have students with these sorts of curiosities, Drexel must have changed very considerably since I was a graduate student at Penn in the 1950s. Best good wishes to both of you,</FONT></P>
<P><B><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">PEACE AND JUSTICE!</FONT></B>
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<P><B><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">ALLEN D. GRIMSHAW</FONT></B>
<BR><B><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">2211 WOODSTOCK PLACE</FONT></B>
<BR><B><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">BLOOMINGTON, IN 47401</FONT></B>
<BR><B><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">USA</FONT></B>
<BR><B><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">812-336-3771/grimsha@indiana.edu</FONT></B>
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