The paper explores the professional practice of “cultural mediation” in the Italian context. This activity is taken here as a vantage point from which the dynamics of identity projections can be observed, as they emerge from a real-life interaction. The analysis is carried out on a recorded and transcribed encounter involving three participants: a service provider working for a Foreigners Advice Bureau run by the municipal authorities of a major Italian city; a French-speaking asylum seeker from Cameroon; and a Moroccan mediator. The encounter is characterised by a high degree of interactional heterogeneity; triadic configurations where the mediator acts as “interpreter” alternate with parallel conversations and with long dyadic exchanges between the mediator and the service user, in the absence of the service provider. Within this changeable participation framework, the interlocutors’ discursive choices are closely examined. The theoretical framework brings together two complementary paradigms, a linguistic-interactional and a socio-psychological one. The resulting discussion, which revolves around the concepts of “role”, “discourse”, “position” and “narrative”, reveals cultural mediation as an area of instability, where competing identities are interactively constructed and reconstructed.
2017. Language Mediation as Communication System. Communication Theory 27:4 ► pp. 367 ff.
Baraldi, Claudio
2018. Interpreting as mediation of migrants’ agency and institutional support. A case analysis. Journal of Pragmatics 125 ► pp. 13 ff.
Baraldi, Claudio & Federica Ceccoli
2023. Problems of children’s involvement in interpreter-mediated meetings between their teachers and their parents. European Journal of Applied Linguistics 11:2 ► pp. 255 ff.
Baraldi, Claudio & Laura Gavioli
2013. La mediazione nell'interazione centrata sul paziente: il caso delle domande del medico. SALUTE E SOCIETÀ :1 ► pp. 94 ff.
Baraldi, Claudio & Laura Gavioli
2013. Mediating patient-centred interaction: the case of doctors' questions. SALUTE E SOCIETÀ :1 ► pp. 104 ff.
2023. Fraudulent Families? Investigating the Role of Paperwork in the Assessment of Refugees’ Family Reunification in Belgium. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies► pp. 1 ff.
Farini, Federico
2024. Interpreters as facilitators of emotional expressions in multilingual medical interactions: Observations from Italian healthcare practices. Language and Health
Gavioli, Laura
2015. On the distribution of responsibilities in treating critical issues in interpreter-mediated medical consultations: The case of “le spieghi(amo)”. Journal of Pragmatics 76 ► pp. 169 ff.
2016. Translation at the cross-roads: Time for the transcreational turn?. Perspectives 24:3 ► pp. 365 ff.
Lee, J.
2014. A Pressing Need for the Reform of Interpreting Service in Asylum Settings: A Case Study of Asylum Appeal Hearings in South Korea. Journal of Refugee Studies 27:1 ► pp. 62 ff.
Licoppe, Christian & Clair-Antoine Veyrier
2019. O intérprete judiciário como mediador sequencial: a gestão de respostas em audiências de direito de asilo interpretadas consecutivamente. In Fronteiras linguísticas em contextos migratórios, ► pp. 59 ff.
2022. Teaching Translation vs. Training Translators,
POLAT ULAŞ, Aslı
2020. Becoming an interpreter through experience: The perceptions of the non-professional public service interpreters in Turkey. RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi :19 ► pp. 661 ff.
Skinner, Robert
2023. Would you like some background? Establishing shared rights and duties in video relay service calls to the police. Interpreting and Society 3:1 ► pp. 46 ff.
Smith-Khan, Laura
2017. Telling stories: Credibility and the representation of social actors in Australian asylum appeals. Discourse & Society 28:5 ► pp. 512 ff.
Smith-Khan, Laura
2022. Inclusive Processes for Refugees with Disabilities: Improving Communication for Deaf Forced Migrants. In Handbook of Disability, ► pp. 1 ff.
Yoo, Taeyoung
2023. Path-generating moves in professional identity building: marriage migrant community interpreters and their institutional environments in South Korea. Perspectives 31:3 ► pp. 395 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 31 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.