Week 8—Translation and the unequal division of communicative labor

Week 8—Translation and the unequal division of communicative labor

Main reading: Orellana and Guan (2015)

Other reading: Ghandchi (2022); Stasch (2014)

We extend our discussion of the politics of linguistic difference in contemporary societies based on ideologies of a monoglot standard. Differences are inevitable, and that means that participants in any heteroglossic situation all to some extend depend on other people to communicate. How does that work?

References

Ghandchi, Narges. 2022. “‘We Explain’: Interaction and Becoming a Family in Migration.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 32 (3): 520–42. https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12372.

Orellana, Marjorie Faulstich, and Shu-Sha Angie Guan. 2015. “Child Language Brokering.” In 9. Child Language Brokering, edited by Amy K. Marks and Mona M. Abo-Zena, 184–200. New York: New York University Press. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814770948.003.0016.

Stasch, Rupert. 2014. “Powers of Incomprehension: Linguistic Otherness, Translators, and Political Structure in New Guinea Tourism Encounters.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4 (2): 73–94. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau4.2.004.