Interpreting in a Community of Practice

Thus far the various models which impinge on the SLI’s position in workplace interaction have been discussed, together with the gate-keeping aspect inherent in their role. Attention is now turned to the SLI’s interactional role in discourse, particularly in relation to workplace meetings. This section will examine some of the issues pertinent to SLIs engaged in the workplace domain, examining the extent to which the SLI can influence and impact upon workplace discourse, and addressing the degree to which their positioning as co-interlocutor affects the primary participants. As has already been established earlier in this chapter, workplace meetings are complex events, often characterised by fast-flowing interaction, overlapping speech and instances of humorous interplay. I have suggested that consideration of workplace meetings as a CofP enables us to see these aspects of meeting talk as part of the shared repertoire of a particular group. This section will therefore examine

how SLIs manage multi-party talk, including the aspects of turn-taking and overlapping speech, before going on to consider the literature on how they also deal with the issues of face, politeness and collegiality, as enacted through primary participants’ engagement in small talk and humorous exchanges.

Interpreting in multi-party interaction

The interpreter’s bilingual status means that they are routinely engaged in situations where they are frequently the only participant who can understand everything that is said (or signed) and are therefore in ‘a unique position from which to exercise a

certain control’ (Wadensjö 1998: 105). In multi-party interpreting events the

interpreter’s functions can be drastically different compared with dialogue interpreting situations where there are only two primary interlocutors (Takimoto 2009).

To date there has been limited exploration of the SLI’s role in multi-party interaction, such as workplace team meetings. Workplace meetings can be particularly challenging for SLIs and in many instances could be identified as what Dean and Pollard (2001) refer to as ‘high demand/ low control situations’, which can result in a considerable amount of stress for the SLI. In workplaces where the deaf employee is in the minority, most of the challenges facing the SLI can be identified as originating from the dominant norms of the work setting.

Hearing norms

When the deaf individual is in the minority within an organisation or institutional setting, it is hearing discourse styles that are generally the norm (Trowler & Turner 2002; Gold Brunson et al. 2008), compounding the fact that deaf people always tend to be ‘in a ‘‘one down’’ position’ every time they interact with hearing people (Baker- Shenk 1991). The assumption is generally that deaf people will adopt the behavioural norms of the hearing majority, with most hearing people having little awareness or respect of deaf norms (Baker-Shenk 1991). This underlying attitude impacts on the SLIs ability to interpret across a range of situations within the workplace setting.

Participants’ adherence to hearing norms can be observed in the extent to which material presented in the deaf employee’s second language, English, is embedded within workplace meetings. Not only is the written material largely inaccessible (see section 2.3.7) it is also very difficult for deaf individuals to refer to the material whilst watching the SLI. Ideally, time should be allowed for deaf participants to read the document which is being referred to before any discussion commences, but this sort of consideration is rarely offered. More often, deaf employees will be forced to choose between reading the document and missing out on the ensuing discussion, or watching the SLI and feeling somewhat adrift in the debate. These issues are addressed later in more detail in Chapters Seven and Eight.

Turn-taking

Evidence suggests that turn-taking presents particular difficulties for the SLI. The ways in which the SLI manages and controls turn-taking exchanges demonstrates that their sociolinguistic competence informs decisions as to who will be awarded the next turn (Roy 1989). SLIs sometimes need to take ‘self-initiated turns’ in order to manage the flow of communication, with turn exchanges occurring between the SLI and a primary participant (Roy 1989, 2000). These findings have been affirmed by other researchers (see Sanheim 2003), and reiterate that the SLI’s choices about what gets interpreted can affect the outcome of the encounter. Previous explorations of the SLI’s role have focused on situations where the turn-taking was relatively controlled, due in part to the hierarchical relationship between the participants (e.g. professor and student/ doctor and patient) and also because of the number of participants (see Roy 1989; Metzger 1995).

In workplace meetings the way in which the interaction unfolds is one of the factors contributing to the difficulties SLIs experience in multi-party discourse. In workplaces where participants know each other well, meetings can be characterised by fast-flowing and overlapping speech, underpinned by an assumption of shared understanding and background knowledge. The SLI’s awareness and understanding of the social situation influences their on-going decision-making process, along with a range of factors such as knowledge of conversational styles, participant status and authority, and participant roles. Aware of the different rules of interaction that exist

within deaf and hearing cultures, SLIs are responsible for making decisions about which set of rules to adhere to (Baker-Shenk 1991). SLIs can exert control over who contributes and who doesn’t within an interpreted event, including when participants wish to interrupt or interject when another individual holds the floor (Baker-Shenk 1991). Responsibility for informing the deaf employee about the nature of the discourse (e.g. that several speakers are talking at the same time), as well as the culturally appropriate moments to contribute or to interrupt, therefore generally falls to the SLI.

Some hearing participants will welcome the presence of the SLI, perceiving them as a way to legitimately enforce turn-taking (Gold Brunson 2008), recognising that such ‘refereed time’ can be beneficial to all participants (Goswell et al. 2008: 201). The enforcement of turn-taking can allow time for the SLI to complete their interpretation, thus enabling the deaf participant to engage in the interaction on a level playing field with their hearing peers (Hurwitz 2008). However, it can also inhibit the spontaneous ways in which people interact (Hurwitz 2008). Hearing employees can frequently require prompts to remind them about the need for turn-taking and extra time to allow for topics to be interpreted (Beaton & Hauser 2008). Furthermore, requests for meetings to be slowed down, in order for the SLI to perform effectively, can meet with resistance from hearing participants (Trowler & Turner 2002).

Campbell et al. (2008), state that successful interpreted communication will often depend more on the effectiveness of the chair, than on the primary participants or the SLI. If accustomed to working with an SLI, the chair of the meeting can sometimes use their presence as an excuse to insist that all participants adhere to good protocol during the event, i.e. asking individuals to speak one at a time, ensuring that all participants have the opportunity to contribute, and including sufficient breaks.

The norms of hearing team meetings directly impact on the SLI’s ability to manage their interpreting lag time (Turner & Trowler 2002), affecting the processing of the incoming message and influencing the way in which they re-present the information in the target language. Interpretation lag can also affect the dynamics of the interaction in the meeting, resulting in some participants viewing it as an ‘uncalled-

for interruption’, the management of which requires considerable sensitivity on behalf

of the SLI (Campbell et al. 2008: 93).

Overlapping speech

In many workplace meetings, participants tend to speak at the same time and frequently talk over each other’s contributions (Campbell et al. 2008; Gold Brunson et al. 2008; Beaton & Hauser 2008). In settings where the chair and other participants are unaccustomed to working with SLIs and deaf employees, there may be no recognition of the need for individuals to speak one at a time (Campbell et al. 2008). In some meetings, where members’ contributory talk frequently overlaps and where participants talk across each other, the interpreting difficulties cannot be solved, as this way of behaving is ‘their reality, their group dynamic’ (Gold Brunson et al. 2008: 190). In established CofPs, where this type of behaviour is the norm, the SLI will therefore almost always face an uphill struggle in managing the discourse event. Overlapping speech between primary parties poses a considerable challenge to the interpreter’s competence in translating and coordinating (Wadensjö 1998), as the SLI can only interpret for one person at a time and thus cannot manage overlap (van Herreweghe 2002). According to Roy (1993: 350) SLIs have four options available to them:

1. They can stop one or both participants. By halting the turn of one speaker, the SLI can thus allow the other speaker to continue.

2. They can momentarily ignore the overlapping speech of one of the participants, whilst retaining that segment of discourse in their memory and continuing to interpret the other participant. The ‘held’ portion of discourse can subsequently be produced immediately following the end of the other participant’s turn.

3. They can ignore the overlapping discourse completely.

4. They can momentarily ignore the overlap, and, upon completing their interpretation of one participant, offer a turn to the other primary participant. Alternatively, they could indicate in some other way that a turn had been attempted.

Van Herreweghe (2002) puts forward a fifth strategy, suggesting that the SLI can choose to warn participants that overlapping talk is occurring and allow them to resolve the conflict. Whilst this option requires the SLI to intervene initially, responsibility for determining the issue is then handed over to the primary participants. Providing a condensed rendition appears to be another coping strategy where the temporal constraints of the meeting mean that the interpreter has to use this method to ensure that participants have at least some access to the information being discussed (Takimoto 2009). The interpreter can shift their footing from spokesperson to reporter when it is necessary to present a summary of multiple utterances made by participants. This summarised reporting of multiple renditions into one rendition appears to be a conscious choice. By shifting footing to become a narrator or storyteller, the interpreter thus embeds the actors in her rendition (Goffman 1981; Takimoto 2009: 39).

Interpreter-mediated events involving multiple participants, where there is potentially an overlap of more than one speaker at a time, present a greater challenge in terms of the SLI’s discourse management (van Herreweghe 2002) and are likely to exclude or disadvantage deaf participants to a greater extent. Deaf participants are not only reliant on the SLI to provide them with information about the current speaker, they are also dependent on the SLI to initiate their turn or relay their own contribution. Evidence suggests that interpreters (particularly those in community settings) often do not have the opportunity to take up the options mentioned above as there are difficulties in interrupting the flow of the interaction (Wadensjö 1998).

Source attribution and eye-gaze

It is clear from the preceding discussion that multi-party interaction presents a challenge for SLIs, with some of the difficulties rooted in the ways in which hearing participants engage in turn-taking and overlapping talk. As identified in section 2.2.7, turn-taking in monolingual interaction is dependent on a mixture of explicit indications (e.g. the current speaker can select next speaker by naming them), and more subtle cues (e.g. through the use of eye-gaze, body shift and/ or vocal intonation), which enable participants to recognise that other interlocutors are offering or relinquishing a turn. Furthermore, in monolingual discourse, primary parties are

able to discern when a turn has been initiated and by whom (Metzger 1999). In spoken language interaction, participants can generally hear when someone begins to talk, and, depending on prior exposure to the speaker’s voice, can identify who is speaking (Metzger 1999). In signed language interaction, deaf participants can initiate a turn by raising and extending their hand or hands out of rest position (van Herreweghe 2002). Eye-gaze is also used to signal that another person can take their turn or contribute to the meeting, once the participant’s attention has been secured (van Herreweghe 2002; Metzger 1999). However, in interpreted interaction between deaf and hearing participants, turn-taking mechanisms follow a different pattern with the linguistic signals for turn-taking based in different modes (van Herreweghe 2002, 2005).

In signed language interpreted interaction, all discourse is effectively channelled through the SLI (Metzger 1999), predominantly restricting the deaf person’s eye-gaze, with the result that they have very little control over the organisation of turn-taking and the allocation of the next turn (van Herreweghe 2002). Information about who is speaking is not ‘inherently discourse bound’ as the SLI is able to relay the content of the speaker’s contribution without necessarily indicating the source of the utterance (Metzger 1999: 153). Deaf participants, unable to hear the auditory signals which indicate who is initiating or relinquishing a turn, are therefore reliant on the SLI for this information, to ensure their place in the turn-taking process. Accordingly, deaf individuals can often struggle to get their point across or have their contribution heard at an appropriate point.

Metzger (1999) refers to the interpreter-generated utterances involved in the turn- taking process as summons and source attribution, with the SLI’s contributions functioning in a way that allows the interpreted interaction to proceed in a similar manner to monolingual discourse. The most frequent form of source attribution in Metzger’s study was a single indexical point in the direction of the speaker. Metzger’s research showed that SLIs did not supply this information on a consistent basis, meaning that intrinsic to each utterance produced by the SLI was a question regarding the source of the contribution. In other words, there is the potential for the deaf participant to be unsure as to whether the interpreter is making her own comment or relaying that of another participant. This can clearly be seen as a source of

confusion for the deaf participant and one which is likely to be exacerbated by greater numbers involved in the discourse event. In order for participants to make sense of the interaction, it would appear that source attribution is a required component of the interpreting process (Metzger 1999). This is particularly the case where the interpreter is providing condensed or summarised renditions of contributions, with an indication as to who says what being essential (Takimoto 2009).

The SLI’s ability to ensure the turn-taking process happens in a timely naturalistic manner, according to hearing norms, is further hampered by the time-lag inherent in the interpreting process. The delay means that the SLI is often still interpreting the contributions of the hearing participants at the point where the deaf participant indicates that they want to interject. When multi-party talk is fast and overlapping the SLI can find it hard to bring the deaf individual into the interaction in a smooth and appropriate manner. This can lead to the deaf individual’s comments being voiced after the discussion has moved on, or in an abrupt fashion which makes the other participants uncomfortable, creating a ‘time lag embarrassment’ (Napier et al. 2008: 36).

Power differentials

Deaf peoples’ positioning in terms of the power relationships within meetings is also relevant to the degree to which the SLI can enable access and participation. Rogerson-Revell (2007) states that the conventionalised rights and functions held by participants means the distribution of power, status and roles within meetings can be perceived as being fixed and static, rather than as aspects of interaction which can be influenced by strategic language use. However, even in more formalised and regulated meetings, certain individuals can experience difficulties in getting heard during workplace interaction. The micro-climate created within face-to-face communicative exchanges can affect the positioning of participants in relation to each other (Cook-Gumperz & Messerman 1999). Participants who lack the resolution to stand their ground, who do not or cannot contribute as powerfully as others, or are for reasons such as regional, ethnic or gender variations in interactive style in a less credible position, can struggle to interact on an equal level with other group members (Rogerson-Revell 2007). Frequently in the minority in workplace settings, deaf

employees can experience relatively powerless positioning within workplace discourse. Whilst the SLI can address this power imbalance to some degree, their mere presence, for reasons discussed in this section, is insufficient to guarantee that the deaf employee will be able to participate in discussions and contribute in the same way as their hearing peers.

Interpreting humorous exchanges and small talk

Section 2.2.6 detailed the ways in which humour allows participants to maintain good