Publications
Publication details [#58377]
Hlavac, Jim. 2014. Participation roles of a language broker and the discourse of brokering: An analysis of English–Macedonian interactions. Journal of Pragmatics 70 : 52–67.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Keywords
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
Elsevier
Journal WWW
Annotation
This study explores three real-life interactions involving a young language broker who performs lay interpreting from English for his Macedonian-speaking family members. Drawing on Goffman's concepts of ‘footing’ and ‘participant roles’ which a speaker can adopt, this study investigates how a broker deals with the conversational moves of precursors to adopt the role of animator, author, and also principal. This paper shows a broker's positioning to the role of principal and how this is parleyed and re-negotiated in alternations of footing in which the broker can adopt this role and then abandon it.
Transcribed speech shows evidence of features that are characteristic of interpreter speech: ‘relayed inter-lingual transfer’ and ‘recipient design’. At the same time, inter-lingual transfer is punctuated cyclically by responses and prompts from others to engage with the broker as a speaker in his own right. This paper shows a broker's positioning to the role of principal and how this is negotiated and re-negotiated in changes of footing in which the broker can assume this role and then relinquish it.