Constructing a Productive Other
Discourse theory and the Convention refugee hearing
Author
This book is a description of the process of constructing a productive Other for the purpose of being admitted to Canada as a Convention refugee. The whole claiming procedure is analyzed with respect to two actual cases, and contextualized by reference to pertinent national and international jurisprudence. Since legal analysis is deemed insufficient for a complete understanding of the argumentative and discursive strategies involved in the claiming and “authoring” processes, the author makes constant reference to methodologies from the realm of literary studies, discourse analysis and interaction theory, with special emphasis upon the works of Marc Angenot, M.M. Bakhtin, Pierre Bourdieu, Erving Goffman, Jürgen Habermas and Teun van Dijk. In so doing, he illustrates a reductive movement that inevitably occurs in legal argumentation which results in the displacement the subject from the realm of “refugee claimant” to that of claimant as “diminished Other.”
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 29] 1994. x, 272 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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Acknowledgements | p. 9
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Introduction: The Construction of the Other | p. 1
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The Chronotope for the Convention Refugee Hearing | p. 17
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Interpreting and Transcribing the Other | p. 37
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The Opening Section: The Discursive Paradigm | p. 65
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The Middle Section: The Life Story | p. 117
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The Closing Section: The un-Dialogic Other | p. 167
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The Implicit and Explicit Criteria for Rendering the Decision: The Woman as Wtiness and the Appeal Case | p. 203
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Conclusion: The Destruction of the Self | p. 241
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Notes | p. 247
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Cases Cited | p. 253
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Index | p. 271
“The book improves our understanding both of the plight of refugee claimants and of the ways in which their fate is decided.”
Ian Mason, Heriot-Watt University
“This book tackles the more substantive relationships between the written legal code and the discourse practices of participants in refugee hearings.”
Denise Gandhi in Forensic Linguistics 3(2), 1996
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This list is based on CrossRef data as of 7 june 2023. 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.
Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CF: Linguistics
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General