Reflexivity

A Member was warning his colleagues to be sensitive about budgetary issues for next year’s Parliament during one of the political parties’ Working Group meeting today, because of the backdrop of the global financial crisis.
Earlier today I had asked another Member if there is any relationship between simultaneous interpretation and the European heart. He asked what I meant: “the European heart, do you mean the feelings you have as a European?” I explained that I don’t know what it means but I’ve heard people use it when I brought up certain topics.
This meeting provided interpretation in 19 of the official twenty-three languages; no Bulgarian, Danish, Gaelic or Maltese. Estonian was provided but not used during the the 55 minutes that I was present. The Chair used English. On the floor was heard

Romanian 1 minute = 2%
Italian 4 minutes = 7%
Spanish 11 minutes = 20%
German 11 minutes = 20%
English 28 minutes = 51%

Not heard: Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, Greek, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovene, and Swedish.
I had the good fortune to also talk today with a Member who was in this meeting, who clarified some of the dynamics for me. There was a great deal of political maneuvering in this meeting, some “brinkmanship” that got a particular compromise through. The Member who got it through “was playing fast and loose with all of us,” according to the Member I spoke with. I noted only one instance of codeswitching into English, which happened during the presentation and debate on this bill. After a rather heated exchange involving more faux “points of order” (see yesterday’s entry), the Member presenting the compromise suddenly asserted, “She agrees with that!”
Categorization is always a challenge. I’ve been speculating about English as the language of control, but I’m also thinking of what another Member said today:

Sometimes you can’t make a point in any language without using a word from another language!

We were discussing the creation and maintenance of a shared, common culture premised upon the use of different languages. This Member named several instances of “artificial invention” – when a word (often in English but not always) has no equivalent in other official languages. Several language communities actively create equivalents in their own language, such as the Greeks who came up with an artificial word for “subsidiarity.” Subsidiarity might seem like an English word (originally Latin), but it became an instrumental term in the European Union jargon from a German context. Likewise, “ombudsman” came originally from Scandinavian languages, particularly Swedish.
This kind of inter-language borrowing and intra-language coinage of new vocabulary is indeed an outgrowth of the multilingual environment, but both phenomena are still premised in a logic of monolinguistic distinction. What I’m trying to do is shift attention away from the language(s) per se, to the social interaction and cultural effects of using multiple languages in the same place and time.

Popularity: unranked [?]

The committee that I observed yesterday was fascinating because it was chaired by a Swedish Member of the European Parliament who ran the meeting in Swedish except for four times when something happened. (I’m not sure how to label the “somethings” that “happened” yet.) The first quarter of an hour passed with only the Chairman’s routine procedural commands. His pace was a bit more measured than the other voting times I’ve watched – or maybe I’m acclimating to the speed at which the Members usually dash through these necessary but tedious sessions.
I was in the meeting for 75 minutes (it was scheduled for 3.5 hours but I had other appointments). Twenty of the 23 official languages were interpreted (there was no Gaelic, Maltese, or Slovakian), and as far as I could tell all booths were working at all times. The meeting may have been webcast, so the interpreters would continue working even if the MEPs or staff who requested them were not present.
The languages heard on the floor during the hour and fifteen minutes I was there were:

Swedish 38 minutes = 50%
English 19 minutes = 24%
German 6 minutes = 7.6%
French 6 minutes = 7.6%
Portuguese 3 minutes = 3.4%
Greek 1 minute = 1.3%

Not heard on the floor during the time that I was there: Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Slovenian, or Spanish.
Here are the four things that happened, when the Chairman codeswitched from Swedish to English.

1)
15:32 “It was not carried. That was my fault.” I did not hear the question or comment that elicited this response; I believe it was made on the floor without using the microphone. I do not know, therefore, whether English or another language was used. I am fairly sure that whatever was said was not widely interpreted.

2)
15:43 “Maybe [the previous speaker's comment] was not a point of order.” The previous speaker had addressed the group first in Greek (I think) then codeswitched to English.
15:44 “That was also not a point of order.” This was in response to another Member’s agreement with the Chair that what the first Member had said was not a point of order, it was an opinion and there were different opinions in the room.

3)
15:45 “Listen to me, we have to vote … once again . . . because for me . . . ”
(there was a pause, some consultation, then) . . . we had a result. We can’t have two results, ok?”
The Chair codeswitched back to Swedish for a minute then
15:47 “We have guests here to make short statements before the appointment. Please, some of you are very excited, I understand, but please, I need to give the floor to our guests (sound of gavel).” A vote happened in between the second and third codeswitching events; probably they are related. One might call this one event, except the vote itself was conducted in Swedish as were all the other votes.

4)
16:04 A bell sounded. The Chair said, “Yea, the other one.” My sense was the bell ringing was an accident and the Chair’s comment was an aside that was picked up by the microphone.

Nearly everyone had their headphones on most of the time, and with both ears. Presumably not many of the Members, staff, or guests present know Swedish.
I have different thoughts about what these observations may mean. I wrote earlier that English may be the language of control, certainly that hypothesis is supported by the timing and apparent purpose for codeswitching in this meeting.
The confusion with whether or not a revote needed to occur or not is fascinating. I think there may have been a problematic moment in the group which manifested in a combination of reactions: there was a brief silence after the electronic vote showed the numbers 21 against 19 for, then some table pounding, then the Chairman’s first statement about voting again, a pause during which applause started then a second statement from the Chair against another vote. I have no idea who was engaging the Chair from the floor, or even whether the matter of re-voting (or not) started from a Member on the floor or with the electronic technology itself. It seems, though, that a breach occurred prior to the vote (two Members making “points of order” which were not actually points of order), the result was a surprise, and a further, temporary decomposition of the entire group lasted for nearly two minutes.
This is a situation when the observations of the working interpreters could add to a potentially significant construction of knowledge.

Popularity: 8% [?]

There is only one scene that is too tidy in Gran Torino. It seems unlikely to me that after committing murder, gang members would hang around waiting for arrest by the police. But this is part of what gives the film its essential Americanness: in the midst of tragedy, the glimmer of a happy ending.
Gran Torino is a study in control, depicting the redemption of an old man who – as a young man – lost self-possession at a crucial moment and did a terrible thing. All the characters cope with the consequences of history in contemporary U.S. society, from the mass displacement of the Hmong because of allying militarily with America against communism in the 1960s to the showmanship of angry young disenfranchised men playing it cool and dangerous on the street. The verbal aggression is shocking, especially the “man talk” of white men that is typically protected from such blatant public display. Parallels with ways of talking that are stereotypically associated with racial minority groups are not difficult to draw. Racial and ethnic labels can – and are – used to express affection just as readily as disdain.
Using anti-politically correct language is not an automatic barrier to developing relationships of trust and respect across cultural difference. Not surprisingly, young people are most adept at recognizing and codeswitching among distinct forms of address. For immigrants, this is well-documented: bilingual children interpret for their parents and grandparents, bridging differences of language while undergoing irrevocable transformations in identity. The little girl who interprets her grandfather’s request to remove a wasp’s nest is no different from the hearing children of deaf parents, except that her family has no recourse to professional interpretation services. The home maintenance scene is innocent enough, unless one knows the range of situations children can be forced to handle.
Adults cope as best they can, relying on traditional rituals of communication that may or may not translate across contexts and perceptions. Cultures are in contact and conflict: the contrast between the Kowalski’s midwestern family dynamics and those of the Hmong family is stark. Despite, for instance, Walt’s grotesque violation of cultural norms, family members and friends trust a teenage girl’s intuition about inviting this crotchety mean old man for food and beer at a social/ceremonial event. Sue explains some of the cultural differences to Walt, whereas his own son fails to recognize his father’s call for help. Walt’s personal style of complaining about everything is mirrored in his son, and his self-centeredness is mirrored in his granddaughter. She has her eye on inheriting some of his belongings, and he has his eye on the physical decline of neighbor’s houses spoiling his view from the front porch.
Annoyed as he is by feeling imposed upon by his Hmong neighbors, Walt finds a use for the regard he has unexpectedly earned. Grudgingly, but not unwisely, he also allows himself to change, to grow into the opportunities that the situation affords. Circumstances unfold, as they always do, along a mix of predictable and unpredictable contours. In the end, Walt generates the only possible peaceful outcome. He is able to do this not because he is skillful at anticipating or manipulating the passions of others, but because he understands intimately – from the inside out – that fear and threat combine explosively under certain conditions.
The story is a compelling achievement on many levels. As contemporary film, it captures all the volatility of race-based nationalism within increasingly transnational societies. Xenophobia is hardly unique to the United States, and the random violence that once seemed particular to the States is spreading even to Belgium. As a potentially culminating work of art, Clint Eastwood does not offer a one-size-fits-all solution, but he does illustrate a complex set of realistic models from which we can glean inspiration.

Popularity: unranked [?]