[Ethnocomm] e-seminar

[Stephanie Jo Kent]

Hi everybody,


Reading Tamar’s commentary and subsequent contributions has been thrilling.
Now I understand why I’ve been subsisting on the margins of EC--I simply
wasn’t smart enough to figure it out until others could articulate the
relevant parameters!

Maybe I’m a textbook case for incoherence ;)

There are many specific points in the dialogue so far that I could respond
to (especially Trudy, Jay and David and others too), but since most
(perhaps practically all) of you don’t know me and haven’t read my stuff,
I’ll just select some starting points and summarize what I’ve been working
on.  I imagine you’ll notice multiple  points of interconnection with the
insights shared here; maybe we can figure out how I could finally package
some of what I’ve done in a proper EC paper.

“EC research has tended to address codes as ‘historically situated,’
already emplaced, stressing the spatial rather than the the temporal
dimension constituting the Hymesian category of Setting--a static
perspective that does not address the temporality implicit in processes of
encoding…” (Katriel, 2015, p. 455, emphasis added). My dissertation is an
effort in resisting standard forms while relying on EC-style analysis. I
knew/know I’m addressing time but only had one example from the EC
literature to draw upon (Scollon and Wong-Scollon 1990). So I went
interdisciplinary, to literature (Bakhtin’s chronotopes), translation
studies (Venuti’s 1998 domestication and foreignization), linguistic
anthropology (indexicality, e.g., Silverstein 2006 but especially as
articulated by Blommaert 2012), political history (Neustadt and May 1986),
whatever else I found, wherever I found it (e.g., fluid mechanics,
neuroscience!).

My object is interpreting: the live encoding (!) by a human being of
utterances in one language to utterances in another language, be it spoken
language or signed language--that is, one of the 130+ known sign languages
spontaneously generated by Deaf people whenever they cluster in sufficient
numbers. I tried initially to think of the interpreter as an
instrumentality (still a relevant frame), but thinking of the interpreter
as an encoder also has explanatory potential. Also, I ran into some trouble
with the definition of a speech community, because the boundaries of who is
‘in’ an interpreted interaction are extraordinarily porous and participants
are radically heterogenous. Finally, there’s discourse about interpreting,
which is to a certain extent separate and distinct from the discourses that
are enacted during interpreted interaction--but obviously related. All of
which have temporal implications of significant consequence.

To continue Tamer’s statement: “... [to] address the temporality implicit
in processes of encoding as those processes that establish stabilized codes
for the communication of meanings and/or shared sensibilities” (Katriel,
2015, p. 455, emphasis added). My entry point was criticism Deaf people
frequently inveigh against sign language interpreters, which Donal
recognized instantly included a term for talk. Back in the day, Donal
squeezed me onto a pre-conference panel before the NCA conference in Miami
(2004?). My presentation was well received; Ron Scollon gave me a ton of
encouragement. But I had mixed feelings…. I didn’t want to investigate the
possible term for talk per se…retroactively, there was something ‘static’
about that, when what I was aiming for was the social transaction of being
interpreted & otherwise participating in interpreted interaction. Donal
told me not to limit myself with the label “ethnography of communication,”
which was freeing, but I wasn’t able to discover how to pursue my
investigation within an EC paradigm.

The “stabilized code for the communication of meanings” includes (at least)
a discourse about interpreting by users/consumers/clients and a discourse
about interpreting by practitioners. Additionally, the second reason I’m so
excited about Tamer’s commentary, is that the idea and concept of “an
interpreter,” that is, what an interpreter can and should do (and not do)
and also ‘what interpreting should/could feel or be like’ was a direct
result of technological development. The so-called “IBM System” was
designed and implemented by the US government and IBM at the Nuremberg
Trials after WWII. It enabled the simultaneous transmission of
interpretations of the four languages spoken by participants in the trial
along different channels, so everyone could understand and participate in
their own language. Following the Social Construction of Technology (SCoT)
theory and method, it seems to me the evidence shows there was never a
period of “interpretive flexibility” (Bijker, Hughes and Pinch, 1987).
Instead the invention and deployment of simultaneous interpreting went into
immediate “closure” based on the criteria and conditions imposed for the
trials. So Deaf people’s criticism of interpreters reflects not only a
cultural sensibility but also says something about mediated communication
in general.

Eventually I was able to distinguish a homolingual bias (preference for
communicating in the same language) and identify interpreting as the case
par excellence for plurilingual communication (when more than one code is
in use among participants in the same timespace). I haven’t made the case
for either of these with the kind of rigor strict conformity to EC would
impose, but now I can begin to imagine how this could fit within the
paradigm instead of only dancing around its edges. I don’t know if this
presents a challenge or opportunity to EC’s interpretivist (generally
non-critical) paradigm? It would be cool if some of the assumptions of
critical scholars could be validated by EC methods. (Another reason why I
couldn’t stay based exclusively here….the criteria were simply too
homogenous for my research context.)

Kudos David, Wendy, Tamar and the rest of you on this list for pulling
together this e-seminar! Totally awesome :)  I’m eager to dig in more.

References

Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays (V. McGee,
Trans.). M. Holquist & C. Emerson (Eds.). Austin: University of Texas
Press.

Bijker, W., Hughes, T. P., & Pinch, T. J. (1987). The social construction
of technological systems: new directions in the sociology and history of
technology. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Blommaert, J. (2012). Chronicles of complexity: Ethnography,
superdiversity, and linguistic landscapes. Tilburg Papers in Cultural
Studies, 29.

Hymes, D. (1972). Models of the interaction of language and social life. In
J. Gumperz & D. Hymes (Eds.). Directions in sociolinguistics: The
ethnography of communication (pp. 35–71). New York: Holt, Rhinehart and
Winston.

Katriel, T. (2015). Expanding Ethnography of Communication Research: Toward
Ethnographies of Encoding. Communication Theory 25: 454-459.

Neustadt, R. E., & May, E. R. (1986). Thinking in time: the uses of history
for decision- makers. New York: Free Press.

Scollon, Ronald & Wong-Scollon, Suzanne. (1990). Athabaskan-English
Interethnic Communication. In Cultural Communication and Intercultural
Contact, D. Carbaugh, Ed., NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Silverstein, M. (2006). Pragmatic indexing. In K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopaedia
of Language and Linguistics (2nd Ed) Vol. 6 (pp. 14-17). Amsterdam:
Elsevier.

Venuti, L. (1998). The scandals of translation: Towards an ethics of
difference. London: Routledge.
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