LINGANTH Digest - 1 Mar 2013 to 2 Mar 2013 (#2013-27)

[Elise Kramer]

Hi Kate,

William O'Barr and John Conley's chapter "Ideological Dissonance in the American Legal System," from Charles Briggs's _Disorderly Discourse_, might be helpful to you. The chapter is very helpful for thinking about the disjunctures between legal/bureaucratic and lay discursive norms, and provides examples of how the disconnect between the two can have very real negative effects for laypeople.

Hugh Mehan's "The Construction of an LD Student" (from Silverstein and Urban, _Natural Histories of Discourse_) might also be interesting, because he looks at the ways that competing frameworks for defining/describing entities wind up hierarchically organized in institutional practice. 

Hope that helps!

-Elise

-----
Elise Kramer
PhD Candidate
University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology
elise at uchicago.edu


On Mar 2, 2013, at 11:00 PM, LINGANTH automatic digest system wrote:

> There is 1 message totaling 65 lines in this issue.
> 
> Topics of the day:
> 
>  1. help with communication disconnects, high context communication
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Date:    Sat, 2 Mar 2013 16:42:06 +0000
> From:    "Browne,Kate" <Kate.Browne at COLOSTATE.EDU>
> Subject: help with communication disconnects, high context communication
> 
> Greetings!
> I am new to this list and by training, am a cultural anthropologist, not a linguist. So thanks in advance for allowing me to participate in discussions.
> 
> I have a two-part question:
> In my longterm work with a large family impacted by Katrina, I have documented their struggles to communicate with disaster recovery authorities. There are various types of communication failures that occurred between these culturally distinct groups, all of which led to prolonged suffering for the residents .
> 
> I am looking for any literature that might help me label or explain these disconnects across cultural groups. Everyone speaks English, but the embedded assumptions of bureaucrats and the jargon they use make no sense to many blacks in SE Louisiana who have had little or no experience negotiating with bureaucratic institutions. Most of them experience encounters with bureaucrats as bewildering at the least and often, as infuriating and crazy-making. I can also see that for some people, their own sense of agency is undermined because of the repeated problems of failed communications.
> 
> Related to the failed communications is the fact that the speech of family members is a high-context style of communication and very few members know how to codeswitch into a low-context, middle-class style for talking with bureaucrats.
> 
> I know of Cushman's work. Are there other sources that could help me make sense of the disconnects I have found and explain their damaging impact? With respect to high and low context communication, are these ideas still considered useful? Are there other frameworks that might be important to consider?
> 
> Thank you!
> 
> Kate Browne
> 
> 
> *******************************************************
> Katherine E. Browne
> Professor, Department of Anthropology
> Colorado State University
> Fort Collins, CO 80523-1787
> 970-491-5813
> research: http://lamar.colostate.edu/~browne/<https://mail.colostate.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=UVlCEUEh1UCcJHeS1I1vSsCrlor4qM8IGpX_2Q39MRcikER1EDthiHO0uGc_kTBOpy-EoojKQng.&URL=http%3a%2f%2flamar.colostate.edu%2f%7ebrowne%2f>
> Katrina film: http://www.stillwaiting.colostate.edu/<https://mail.colostate.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=UVlCEUEh1UCcJHeS1I1vSsCrlor4qM8IGpX_2Q39MRcikER1EDthiHO0uGc_kTBOpy-EoojKQng.&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.stillwaiting.colostate.edu%2f>
> Caribbean film: http://www.liftingtheweight.colostate.edu/<https://mail.colostate.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=UVlCEUEh1UCcJHeS1I1vSsCrlor4qM8IGpX_2Q39MRcikER1EDthiHO0uGc_kTBOpy-EoojKQng.&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.liftingtheweight.colostate.edu%2f>
> *******************************************************
> 
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> 
> End of LINGANTH Digest - 1 Mar 2013 to 2 Mar 2013 (#2013-27)
> ************************************************************