Article published in:
Dialogue in institutional settings
Edited by Franca Orletti and Letizia Caronia
[Language and Dialogue 9:1] 2019
► pp. 149–171

Names and the transidioma

Language and power in the 21st century

| University of San Francisco (USA)
The experience of linguistic globalization, and the communicative disorder it entails, requires a serious retooling of most basic units of semiotic analysis. The complexity and indeterminacy of late-modern communication affects most sociolinguistic assumptions behind social interactions. In particular, we can no longer assume a model of dialogue based on shared indexical knowledge. By introducing the concept of transidioma – i.e. the ensemble of communicative practices of people embedded in translingual environments and engaged in interactions that blend face-to-face and digitally-mediated communication – this paper documents the renewed reliance on denotational references, especially proper names, as a primary strategy to handle dialogue during asylum hearings.
Keywords: transidioma, translanguaging, crosstalk, multimodality, interactional power, asylum
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Translingualism, power, and institutional settings
  • 3.Credibility, referentiality, and proper names
    • 3.1Personal names
    • 3.2Place names
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 05 July 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00036.jac
References
Agha, Asif
2007 Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun
1996 Modernity at Large. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.Google Scholar
Baker, Mona
(ed.) 2010 Critical Readings in Translation Studies. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Battaglia, Debbora
1995 “Problematizing the Self.” In Rhetorics of Self-Making, ed. by Debbora Battaglia. Berkeley: University of California Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bickerson, Derek
2008 Bastard Tongues. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan
2001 “Investigating narrative inequality: African asylum seekers’ stories in Belgium.” Discourse and Society 12(4): 413–449. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2009 “Language, asylum, and the national order.” Current Anthropology 50(4): 415–441. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bohmer, Carol and Amy Shuman
2007 Rejecting Refugees: Political Asylum in the 21st Century. London: Routledge. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Butler, Judith
1997 Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Conover, Ted
1987 Coyotes A Journey Across Borders with America’s Illegal Migrants. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Cronin, Michael
2003 Translation and Globalization. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Danet, B. and Susan C. Herring
2007 The Multilingual Internet. Language, Culture and Communication Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Brad
2000 “The interpreter as institutional gatekeeper.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 4, 3: 379–405. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Derrida, Jacques
1995 On the Name. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
De Swaan, Abram
2001 Words of the world. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Eades, Diana
2005 “Applied linguistics and language analysis in asylum seeker cases.” Applied Linguistics 26 (4): 503–526. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Eades, Diana and Jacques Arends
(eds) 2004 “International Journal of Speech.” Language and the Law 11 (2). Special issue on language analysis in asylum hearings.Google Scholar
Eco, Umberto
1979 The Role of the Reader. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Enfield, Nicholas J. and Tanya Stivers
(eds) 2007 Person Reference in Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fassin, Didier and Richard Rechtman
2009 The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel
1980 Power/Knowledge. Brighton: Harvester Press.Google Scholar
García, O. and Li Wei
2014 Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Giddens, Anthony
1990 The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Good, Anthony
2007 Anthropology and Expertise in the Asylum Courts. London: Routledge. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Greimas, Algirdas
1982 Sémiotique: Dictionnaire Raisonné. Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar
1988 Maupassant: The Semiotics of Text. Amsterdam: Benjamins Pub. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Robert
1966 Pidgin and Creole Languages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Hannerz, Ulf
1996 Transnational Connections. Culture, People, Places. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
ICS-Consorzio Italiano Solidarietà
2005 La Protezione Negata. Milan: Feltrinelli.Google Scholar
Jacquemet, Marco
2005a “Transidiomatic practices: Language and power in the age of globalization.” Language and Communication 251: 257–277. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2005b “The registration interview: Restricting refugees’ narrative performances.” In Dislocations/Relocations: Narratives of Displacement, ed. by Mike Baynham and Anna De Fina. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.Google Scholar
2011 “Crosstalk 2.0. Asylum and Communicative Breakdowns.” Text and Talk 31(4): 475–498. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Jameson, Fredric and Masao Miyoshi
(eds) 1998 The Cultures of Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kalashnikov, Alexander
2005 “Translation of Charactonyms from English into Russian.” Translation Journal 10(3): 20–44.Google Scholar
Kripke, Saul
1972 Name and Necessity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen
2007 “Optimizing Person Reference – Perspectives from Usage in Rossel Island.” In Person Reference in Interaction, ed. by Nicholas Enfield and Tanya Stivers, 29–72. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Maryns, Katrijn and Jan Blommaert
2001 “Stylistic and thematic shifting as a narrative resource: Assessing asylum seekers’ repertoires.” Multilingua 20(1): 61–84. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Maryns, Katrijn
2005 The Asylum Speaker: Language in the Belgian Asylum Procedure. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart
1843 A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation. London: John W. Parker, West Strand.Google Scholar
Morgan, Lewis H.
1985 [1877] Ancient Society. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Nederveen Pieterse, Jan
2003 Globalization and Culture. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Orellana, Marjorie F.
2009 Translating Childhoods: Immigrant Youth, Language, and Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pennycook, Alastair
2007 Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pollabauer, Sonja
2004 “Interpreting in asylum hearings: Issues of role, responsibility and power.” Interpreting 6(2): 143–180. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Propp, Vladimir
1968 [1957] Morphology of the Folktale. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Reynolds, Jennifer and Marjorie F. Orellana
2009 “New Immigrant Youth Interpreting in White Public Space.” American Anthropologist 111(2): 211–223. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rovelli, Marco
2006 Lager Italiani. Milano: Rizzoli.Google Scholar
Sapir, Edward
1949 [1921] Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York: Harcourt. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey
1992 Lectures on Conversation Vol. 2 (Fall 1968-Spring 1972). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Scott, James
1998 Seeing Like a State. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Searle, John
1971 “The Problem with Proper Names.” In Semantics, ed. by Danny D. Steinberg and Leon A. Jakobovits, 134–141. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya, Nicholas J. Enfield and Stephen C. Levinson
2007 “Person reference in interaction”. In Person Reference in Interaction, ed. by Nicholas Enfield and Tanya Stivers, 1–20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Strawson, Peter Frederik
1971 “Identifying Reference and Truth-Values.” In Semantics, ed. by Danny D. Steinberg and Leon A. Jakobovits, 86–99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tomlinson, John
1999 Globalization and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
1995 Interviewing Applicants for Refugee Status. Training Module. Geneva: Training Service Rapid Deployment Level 4.Google Scholar
Vendler, Zeno
1971 “Singular Terms.” In Semantics, ed. by Danny D. Steinberg and Leon A. Jakobovits, 115–133. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence
(ed.) 2000 The Translation Studies Reader. London: Routledge. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Vom Bruck, Gabriele and Barbara Bodenhorn
(eds) 2006 The Anthropology of Names and Naming. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar