ERIC Number: EJ1261543
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020-Jul
Pages: 35
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0167-8507
EISSN: N/A
Investigating the Language-Culture Nexus in Refugee Legal Advice Meetings
Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication, v39 n4 p395-429 Jul 2020
This paper explores linguistic and cultural complexity within immigration legal advice communication. Drawing from a linguistic ethnographic study, ethnographic and interactional data from two linked advice meetings about UK refugee family reunion processes are subject to deductive analysis using Risager's model of the language-culture nexus, within which the intersection of language(s) and culture(s) in a communicative event is conceptualised as a nexus of linguistic, languacultural, discursive, and other (non-linguistic) cultural resources and practices. The paper operationalises this intercultural communication theory in a new and exploratory way to investigate how cultural complexity is manifest, and interactionally managed, at different levels of meaning. The substantive analysis shows how a range of divergent resources, brought in by the different participants, are drawn upon and externalised as communicative practices in both legal advice meetings. Understanding is negotiated interculturally at different levels of meaning -- the linguistic, the languacultural, and the discursive -- in contrasting ways in each meeting. Methodologically, the paper argues that a strength of Risager's framework is that it supports a methodical and structured analysis of communicative events characterised by linguistic and cultural complexity, which can be linked to other discourse analytical approaches. The model's complexity, and its foregrounding of verbal over other semiotic modes, are highlighted as challenges for the analyst.
Descriptors: Refugees, Immigration, Laws, Ethnography, Meetings, Family Relationship, Models, Intercultural Communication, Cultural Differences, Communication Strategies, Guidelines, Discourse Analysis, Semiotics, Translation, Foreign Countries, Lawyers, Public Policy, Audio Equipment, Multilingualism, Vignettes, Semantics, Pragmatics, Language Usage, Second Languages
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: United Kingdom
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A