Reflexivity

I had to invent the presentation proposal many months ago . . . I’ve highlighted the phrases in bold that speak most directly to the shaping of the actual presentation.

This presentation conjectures an extension of Bakhtin’s exposition of language via the novel to cultural practices of simultaneous interpretation. Interpreters deal in real time with features of language and characteristics of authorship apparent in novelization – such as heteroglossia, polyphony, alterity, interpenetration of different languages, and double voicing – all intersecting in conglomerations of meaning/meaningfulness. The task of the interpreter is to minimize authorial interference with the mix of discourses in speaker’s utterances in order to include, as fully as possible, the original interlocutor’s voice within their own utterance. While endeavoring to re-present another person’s use of (centripetalizing and centrifugalizing) language, interpreters deliberately try to root in an authorial position without force.
Meanwhile, general discourses in popular culture and by participants in simultaneous interpretation about interpreting indicate that most people think about language in non-dialogic terms: as homogenous, unifying formal structures with fixed meanings, i.e., with monolingual logic. Interpreters’ intimate familiarity, however, with the presence and use of different languages in actual interactions yields experiential knowledge that monolingual logic cannot accommodate. Nonetheless, discourses among professional interpreters display features Bakhtin describes as characteristic of the epic. This paper investigates a triangulation among images of language presented by Bakhtin and those in interpreter and interlocutor discourses about interpreting. While creative use of language brings us novels, novels show us the incredible spectrum of what language can do.

The motivation for this intellectual exercise is to explore whether the epistemological capacity indicated by novelness can be used to better conceive how to use language to generate interventions in the centripetalizing and centrifugalizing discourses of our era.

This is not only an academic endeavor for the purpose of theory, although the theoretical foundation must be strong. Nor is comprehending the peculiar situatedness of the interpreter a task only for interpreters; this is a collaborative endeavor requiring the active participation of interlocutors as well. If all language is dialogical (i.e., polyphonic with multiple meanings), and all language is also discursive (representative of and subject to discourses, e.g. Foucault, Fairclough, Blommaert), then interlocutors and interpreters must recognize their (our) mutual participation in generating meaningfulness. For instance, which choices of language use reinforce established dialectical formations (such as, for instance, the perpetuation of discrimination), and which choices unsettle them? Is the speaker’s goal in making utterances to contribute to reification, or does the utterer seek to resolve that (or some other) problem, unaware that their use of language guarantees failure because of what it invokes?
The presenter is currently engaged in dissertation fieldwork into discourses about simultaneous interpretation at the European Parliament. An experienced American Sign Language/English interpreter, she wants to develop and test the intellectual limits of borrowing from Bakhtin’s theoretical framework to elucidate the practical problems of generating simultaneous interpretations in various linguistic combinations among twenty-three languages at the same time. Concurrently, she is trying to act into the system of interpretation at the European Parliament through an action learning/action research methodology that presumes the presence of dialogical capacity even in the presence of a strictly formalized institutional regime. The strategic goal is to cultivate a bed of curiosity about the potentials of simultaneous interpretation. Ideally, spinoff from the project might contribute to public debates concerning language (particularly policies and practices), and specifically in simultaneous interpretation as both end and means for creating and maintaining deep infrastructures that reinforce the capacity of democratic institutions to manage the tensionalities of difference in increasingly equitable ways.
A critical discourse analysis of talk generated in conversation with individual Members of the European Parliament (MEP) is currently being constructed. This analysis will be put into conversation with a similar analysis conducted four years ago in interviews with individual interpreters for the European Parliament. The juxtapositions of viewpoints (opinion, critique, complaint, praise, etc) will compose a more-or-less wholistic image of the conceptual and functional status of language in the workings of the European Parliament. Early findings suggest some intriguing areas of alignment between professional interpreters and the MEPs as users of simultaneous interpretation. These perspectives from participants situated in different roles within a coherent practice of cultural communication indicate some shared identifications.
The conceptualization of participating over time in a shared, cultural communication event can be used to highlight residues of monolingualistic logic in a society overtly seeking to increase multilinguality. Mapping discourses about simultaneous interpretation may illuminate the workings of centripetal and centrifugal forces in a particular case, a bounded ‘location’ involving a specific set of ‘users.’ The results may tell us something interesting about language in society today, and point (I hope) to exciting possibilities for developing conscious and conscientious uses of language in ways that further language policy development and education in accord with democratic political goals. Can we, novelistically, speak the societies in which we want to live into institutional reality?

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What forces blow me back to these shores I cannot say. Nearly five years ago the first conception of what has become my dissertation project was born – right here in the halls of the Aula Magna at Stockholm University! – during an international conference on community interpreting, Critical Link 4. Whoever could have imagined such a return, in which I will practice how to novelize an action research adventure?

• Leili and I talked of surfing;
• Michael said, “the technical term is heteroglossia“;
• and Lisa (all the way from Geneva!) says its just me on helium.

Beatrice, meanwhile, said she could talk freely around me because I’m not an academic! (Maybe she sees something behind me that is beyond the boundaries of my perception?!)
Ragnar clued me in (spontaneously!) to a guy, George Miller, who wrote a paper famous in psychology, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two, about the capacity of working memory. Cognitive science was strongly influenced by informatics, Ragnar explained, and came about largely as a reaction to behaviorism. We commiserated together (just a wee bit) on the development of theories of language and mind based on pure calculation – all mystery removed. Johan then informed me that Ragnar is one of those rare guys who walks his talk, publishing a foundational piece of original research in Norwegian (not English): Language, Thought, and Communication.

Trond carried on about Zizek, (The Matrix), and I met a faculty member and bunch of students from a Communication Disorders program somewhere in Arkansas. The most salient detail to remain in memory was their stiletto contest!

Today I’ll re-arrange the slides for tomorrow’s talk…

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“That’s a cheap shot!” The ethical and fine Prince of Significant Findings, was not completely flattered that I followed his choice of beer. He continued, “Follow my paradigm!” Oy, I thought to myself, wincing just a bit even though I knew full well that he was teasing, we’re in it now. Not long before I had told Brooke that I’m anti-cognition. She almost blinked. Almost. I was not scoring points for subtlety! Then there was Claudia (?), who laughed at me so hard she had tears in her eyes. At least I am able to be a source of amusement (although perhaps only to the sleep-deprived?)
I do respect history, but sometimes “my” history (the history I know combined with my own biography) overwhelms the awareness that other people’s history (what they know and have lived) may be premised upon other foundations. This skews the processing in my prefrontal cortex. (That’s the part that makes us really different from animals – its where we can forecast the ways things may play out in the future, i.e., “an experience simulator.”) Yet, it is always so, yes? You see parts of me that I cannot perceive, and somehow we manage to stumble on regardless.
Unfortunately I had to miss the first two sessions of the second day of the Aptitude for Interpreting conference, so this blogpost is incomplete. My apologies to everyone, although if there was very much math involved then I know at least a few people who entertained themselves by doing basic addition. Do the percentages add up? Yep, you’re right; I also did not stay for the hardcore methodological session. I understand (sortof) the compulsion to measure, but I am leery of a world in which we don’t question the invention of the language used to quantify it. (Someone has said that you can only deconstruct that which you love: see “footnote” below.)
I like Franz’ one-man operation to devise an aptitude test on the ‘what if’ assumption that one of these days the European Union is going to ask for one. And, in general, I agree that there is merit in trying to reduce curricular chaos, but (then again) only so much. Everything in nature operates within zones of uncertainty; why are interpreter trainer/researchers so intent upon its elimination? Yes, I know – there is the market and jobs and demands of the global economy, but what is the valued added of simultaneous interpretation? Can we name it in any kind of compelling way? It seems to me that the contested definition of the role of an interpreter during the performance of interpretation mirrors the contested value of interpretation for society writ large.
Dirk, who was such a good sport in providing a live demonstration of Franz’s test for us, also tossed out a challenge. What if someone provides a grammatically correct but contextually wrong solution that closes the sentence? (The test is a spoken narrative, read at a moderate pace, in which periodic sentences are incomplete. A pause ensues in which the test-taker has 5-7 seconds to generate as many possible endings as fits the grammar and content.) Franz agreed that the unexpected is a limitation; then got us all to laugh: “You would not believe what people will come up with, or how wrong they can be!” Dirk also asked how nonsense responses would be scored, and Franz (winning humor points again) replied, “Our subjects were very cooperative. I don’t know how to deal with people like you.”
Basically, “if you say something to complete the sentence then that’s an achievement.”
Let me draw out and rephrase a possible meaning in order to make it strange: one of the things that interpreters do is change the oral or gestural utterances of human speakers into the (spoken or signed) form of literary text, i.e., “complete the sentence.” Hmmmm. Why are we using written codes for language as a basis for measuring interpretational quality of spontaneous social interaction? I am not suggesting there is a ready alternative (which can only come about through a coordinated, collaborative effort), but is anyone else curious about the ramifications of celebrating the achievement of imposing form?
Another question I have is about the belief that, as someone stated during the Q&A, “a conference interpreter is one who can produce both simultaneous and consecutive interpretation.” Why? They are different skills; why must any given interpreter be held to a performance standard in both? Or, asked another way, if we are going to require that dual ability, why are we not equally requiring skill in the interpersonal (”whispering”-type) situations common to community interpreting as well as those apparently necessary in conference interpreting?
All of these divisions are arbitrary: one can explain the historical developments that seem to have caused them, but simply because they happened is no guarantee of social integrity. Chris and Jemina’s exchange about interpreters being “all things to all people” suggests that we haven’t adequately negotiated the boundaries about what it is we can, should, and/or are capable of doing. (Claudia’s upcoming book on self-protection may be informative in this regard; she was surprised by the finding that interpreters consistently use distancing techniques with interlocutors even when the conditions don’t obviously indicate the need.)
Generally, as we plunge along the p path to aptitude, is there room for critique of the end product?

Here’s what I’m trying to get at:

Much of the discourse during this first conference on Aptitude in Interpreting turns on value assumptions that, for instance, fast processing and the ability to complete thoughts logically based upon prior exposure to content are premier skills of the quality interpreter. First, it should be noted that closure has been described uncomplimentarily by interlocutors as “fill in the blank” interpreting, i.e., as what interpreters do when they don’t have a clue what the interlocutor just said. Second, the premises of familiarity and logic deny the possibility of creative dialogue: they keep the interpreter’s gaze upon the past rather than toward the future. When we practice closure, what we’re generally doing is providing the most common sentiment in relation to the topic or viewpoint or context. In other words, we’re perpetuating an already-established discourse – a completed conception of knowledge or way of orienting – rather than enabling the co-creation of anything new.
Another comment Dirk shared with me is that the way the test is designed, emphasizing completing sentences whose end is missing, works best with languages like German and Dutch – where the most meaningful action comes at the end. In other languages, such as English, where the action can occur anywhere, he mused that the test may not work as well. Franz gave a satisfying answer as to why gaps in the middle are not feasible, but Dirk’s observation reminds me that one of the puzzles I would like help with are differences of duration in uttering complete expressions in various languages. I heard an anecdote that it consistently takes longer to express the same thought in Dutch as in English. Does anyone know that reference? And is there similar information on any other languages or language combinations?
This may or may not be able to be cross-correlated with the time it takes people of different nationalities to clear security at US airports. Carmen shared a dame blanche with me and I’ll be happy to share dessert with her in the future but only if she continues to give the answers allowing immigration officials to prove that they asked the silly questions.
Prescribing closure as one of the basic interpreter performance skills has a range of effects. These effects are experienced and complimented by interlocutors. The cooperation of interpreters and interlocutors in authorizing closure contributes to the images and expectations of what interpretation can accomplish as a medium of intercultural communication.
Maybe this is the best we can do? But I am not convinced….

Footnote:

“In giving an account of his use of the word deconstruction Derrida gives the following explanation: “The undoing, decomposing, and desedimenting of structures, in a certain sense more historical than the structuralist movement it called into question, was not a negative operation. Rather than destroying it was also necessary to understand how an ‘ensemble’ was constituted and to reconstruct it to this end.” So deconstruction names something rather more powerful than simply undoing.”

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Imagine my surprise upon entering the lobby at Lessius University and witnessing a conversation in American Sign Language! My brain has been so otherwise-occupied that it never once crossed my mind that

a) anyone other than European spoken language trainers/researchers would attend or that

b) I might actually know people!

It was absolutely delightful to re-encounter respected colleagues, meet some of the luminaries whose work is required reading, and make new friends (although one always wonders whether they’ll claim me, and/or for how long!)

We started quite seriously, with the keynoter, Mariachiara, setting the context with a superb history of the tension between innate talent and built skill. Are interpreters born or made? Perhaps it is a both/and kind of question, with challenges of re-molding/re-training those with “the aptitude to perform” and fresh cultivation of those with “the aptitude to learn.”

At the end of the day, Miriam reflected that we (interpreter researchers) have learned that we’re asking the right questions, but we don’t seem any closer to clear answers! One needs only hark back to the presentations of Her Majesty of No Results and the Princess of No Significance to find evidence supporting Miriam’s perception. Are we guilty of trying to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse?

“You’re argumentative!” one of my dinnermates proclaimed, as I sought to champion a shadowing task based on the persuasive argumentation of the aforementioned Queen.

I don’t want to be accused of breaking the pinkie pact (especially since I wasn’t at the presenter’s dinner the night before when they apparently made a rule not to ask each other hard questions), but . . . aren’t the hard questions the ones that most need to be asked?!

“You’re against essentialism in all forms!” Miriam bought me a coffee.
(I think this means we are now bonded for life.) Franz invited me to come after him hard….which I did but it wasn’t easy going. First he thought I was arguing that “everything is cognition,” which he agreed is a way that knowledge in the field can be understood. It took some fancy footwork to get across the idea that what I am critiquing is the way that we (interpreters, interpreter trainers, interpreting researchers) collude in assuming that everything in the field can be broken down into nice, neat, discrete boxes. Miriam rephrased this as the human propensity to put everything in categories.
“It’s interesting, but I don’t agree with half of it!” (Shhhsh that interpreter in the corner!)

“Why does your badge say ‘Belgium’ but you are speaking English?” Heidi was trying to process where I was from and why I was delinquent in signing up for the conference dinner. Really, I’m here under cover . . . just as there are “slides no wants to see” (recall the pinkie promise), there are also “some matters untouched” (Cronbach and Snow 1977:6).
“Is this rubbish?” (Get ready, I’m gonna be asking you, Chris!) Meanwhile, Amalija has two weeks to devise the perfect comprehensive provable aptitude test for her incoming screening. She has the power! As Sarka explained,

“some of these people want to be translating Shakespeare’s sonnets, they don’t want anything to do with other people!”

One of the huge dilemmas in interpreter training is predicting when a potential interpreting student might succeed against the evidence that convinces us they won’t, and how to justify the investment of resources when even those students with all the promising signs turn out unable in the end.

“There are no future facts.” (Robert S Brumbaugh, 1966)

What can we learn from the ones who had it made?

It is as if we all contain a multitude of characters and patterns of behavior, and these characters and patterns are bidden by cues we don’t even hear. They take center stage in consciousness and decision-making in ways we can’t even fathom.

The East-West debate came up: does one interpret only into one’s mother tongue, or from a mother tongue into another fluent language? Why, I wonder, are people so invested in this directionality? Meanwhile, the non-sign repetition task of nonsense biological motion that Chris reported seems an awful lot like shadowing to me…. and can I just mention how cool it is to attend a conference with five active languages, three of which are signed?! I am not able to articulate the significance of increases in visual memory, but it caught my attention…advanced interpreters can apparently correctly select geometric shapes after a delay more rapidly than beginning interpreters. Perhaps this is related to what I’ve noticed in my own neural net, specifically the new capacity to learn math after twenty years of signing.
Brooke had the two best slides so far, understating the case for the performance of simultaneous interpretation: “we have a lot to do.” (Can I get copies? Beg beg beg!) I’m especially intrigued by the risk/avoidance measures….just a few days ago I came up with the title for my next conference proposal: “Risk, Resignation, and Loss: Interlocutors on Interpretation in the European Parliament.” (Next week I present some of the results at a conference on Mikhail Bakhtin in Stockholm).
I love the metaphor of the airplane and its engines. Sarka and Heidi get credit for this one together, right? There are the pair (or more) of wing engines that are all about cruising, and then there’s the solo job in the tail, which is all about getting up to altitude. Sherry might win the prize for getting the earliest start, although there is a four year discrepancy concerning the age at which she began interpreting: four? Eight? Then you’ve got peeps like me who didn’t even start learning a second language until 28! Anyway, I am pleased to go along with the decisions that “all of us made” in Sherry’s “we”, particularly the one about merging modalities. The two tests she shared intrigue me: the CNS Vital Signs and the Achievement Motivation Inventory.
I hope no one throws a wobbly because of anything I’ve written here. I was duly warned that someone would have my guts for garters if I transgressed too far. Might I ask, instead, for a soft word on the side and the chance to edit?

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Language is a force.
Language names, and by naming, it calls into being. This is how social reality is constructed and maintained. I think it is an effect of quantum mechanics, but smarter minds than mine are needed to make the connections in a compelling scientific manner.
Last fall I wrote a post on some dynamics of dialogue and discourse, in which I engaged with ideas of a discursive psychologist, Michel Billig.

The core of the argument laid out by Michael Billig (in the articles from Discourse and Society 2008, Vol. 19, Issue 6) is that we who think in terms of critical discourse analysis (CDA) need to be acutely aware of our own uses of language, lest we repeat some of the very elements of language use that we critique in others. Billig’s concern is with social scientific language in general; he selects CDA for heuristic and practical purposes: “It should be a major issue for analysts who stress the pivotal role of language in the reproduction of ideology, inequality and power” (p. 784).

In particular, Billig goes after the academic/theoretical use of nominalization, which is a shorthand way of condensing a particular dynamical concept (something with a lot of parts) into a single term. Debate over costs and benefits of using nominalization seem to swing on the temporal grounding of interlocutors. I’m thinking at the mundane level as well as at level of ideological reproduction. For instance, does saying something about (i.e., naming) tensions in a friendship necessarily make them worse or can it provide a means to shift footings? At the precise moment of making the utterance, there may be a spike in bad feelings – all that tension concentrated and released in the acts of speaking and hearing. But I think that it is what comes next (at least, so I hope) that becomes determinative for the subsequent unfolding. When nominalization is at play, Billig argues there is a tendency to depersonalize behavior or action such that individual contributions to whatever unfolds are lost to perception. So the pattern of tensions enacted when one or another party to the tension actually says something directly about the presence or evidence of tension becomes bigger than the minute social interactions that compose it. The pattern itself becomes “the thing”, and individuals are simply swept up in it, all agency erased.
The question is, when things are not going the way one wishes, what next? I watched an interesting video on the synthesis of happiness this morning (20 minutes long) which argues that if we assume irretrievability, then we enhance our capacity to choose happiness. I’m wondering if this basic precept – that’s what done is done and can’t be changed – could guide many other choices, including the ways we respond when we find ourselves seemingly trapped in a discourse that we don’t necessarily want. I believe it is the element of acknowledgment that I am finding most attractive. Perhaps my general communicative strategy is to reduce uncertainty (see What You Don’t Know Makes You Nervous) in order to make choices clear.
Perhaps.

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In addition to the transmission of information, the larger and deepest purpose of simultaneous interpretation is to generate and maintain common culture among people from different cultures.

As hoped, the opportunity to present on my dissertation fieldwork in-progress forced my brain to synthesize the trends and patterns that I have been noticing during this year of research at the European Parliament, as well as find words to express what I think these trends and patterns suggest about mono- and multilingualism. The effort to explain my perceptions moved me far along the analytical path; since returning to fieldwork many of the findings have crystallized further.
A few weeks ago, after more backbrain simmering, I finally uttered the statement highlighted above, distilling the years of talking with interested colleagues (and anyone else who would listen, thanks Arne!) into a single, comprehensible idea.
Purposes are human creations, not physical facts, so there is plenty of room to disagree. I am anticipating a conversation that will take place in Philadelphia in August (”Interpreting as Culture“), and other conversations that I hope grow from there and link from/with other sources (such as Ryan Commerson’s brilliant master’s thesis applying the work of Stuart Hall).
The feedback provided by participants at my presentations at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh is affirming (thanks!) and helpful. For this post, I am only including the comments that relate specifically to my thesis.
1) “Why,” wrote one participant, “do people want [simultaneous interpretation] to be like a mono-lingual exchange? Why are they so uncomfortable with interpreted interaction…[?]”

I am not sure that interlocutors (or interpreters, for that matter) are consciously aware of comparing the process of interpreted interaction to what it is like to talk with someone in the same language. We are so accustomed to the ease of monolingual communication – it is like the fish not being aware of water or the bird, air. It is, for most of us, our typical environment, the way we get along with nearly everybody, practically all of the time. So when the exceptional circumstance of an interpreted interaction occurs . . . on what other basis could we imagine to evaluate it?

Not only that, but we also have the collusion of academic discourse reinforcing the unquestioned common sense. One professional sign language interpreter wrote,

“…reflecting [on] how my practice is so heavily influenced . . . it’s shocking to reflect on how thoroughly ‘old’ theories of interpreter (’translator’?) role of ‘heard and not seen’ (invisible conduit) have become/are becoming so entrenched, particularly in a place where multi-lingual, multi-cultural awareness should be richest.”

2) That “place” is the European Parliament, about which another participant mused, “Do politicians really want to understand each other?”

Based on the interviews with European Parliament interpreters four years ago, I can say that some interpreters think not! Or at least, not all the time, or not within the constraints of particular structures – such as the plenary sessions (which get the most publicity and thus seem to represent SI at the EP, even though I am inclined to argue more real interpreting gets done in every other setting than that one).

3) “Don’t we get ‘third cultures,’ ‘communities of practice,’ all the time, everytime?” asks another researcher?

Of course we do, but the question is whether that “third culture” is substantively different than what we get without interpretation! The discourses about simultaneous interpretation that I’ve been learning privilege the same kind of characteristics that are prominent in monolingual communication. This was reflected in questions from another participant:

4) “How is this speed in communication (even though passive) … effecting our expectations of it? Our response? Interaction between cultures? Dealing with relationships?”

There’s no definitive answer – we are all co-creating the ways we engage the imperative of speed in collaborative/complementary fashion, consciously or not. Which leads directly into another question posed by another researcher:

5) “Will there be a paradigm shift? Would I like it?” And a participant’s observation: “Despite of promotion of language diversity/equality, for practical/political/power reasons, lingua franca will still be the fate.”

In response, I would distinguish, here, between communities of practice and third cultures. Perhaps this is a naive distinction, but culture is a more-or-less passive development of aggregated relational actions into coherent systemic wholes. (At some point there are leaders, religious figures, etc., who justify the parts and defend the whole.) A community of practice is intentional from the outset. While, as one participant/researcher wrote, “The language produced by interpreters – the form – is indeed a message,” I would say this language constitutes discourse but does not necessarily represent a community of practice until we take hold of the form in order to wield it for specific purpose.

I submit that a purpose which could bind simultaneous interpreters into a community of practice across the gamut of “interpreters in triadic interactions and ’stream-of-language’ events like the European Parliament” (quoting from a participant) is the co-construction of intercultural community premised on language difference.

In addition to the transmission of information, the larger and deepest purpose of simultaneous interpretation is to generate and maintain common culture among people from different cultures.

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Dutch has two words for foreigner. It seems that one is a generic label (buitenlander or “alien”) and the other (vreemdelingen) emphasizes – just slightly? – the strangeness of someone from another land. If I ever develop a respectable degree of fluency, I will begin to listen for the usage of these two words in conversation: what are the situational conditions that inspire one word or the other?
It would be an overstatement to describe myself as the ultimate outsider, but let’s look at the facts: I’m American (for god’s sake), a mere bilingual, and the wrong kind of interpreter. Just as the action component of my research project elicits surprise from persons at the site of study, their reactions hold a mirror up for me to see myself, too. Am I just a pushy American? Or am I true to form – enacting that independent “can do” attitude that is a central feature of the American character? Heavens, what is she on about?!
When I made it to Strasbourg last month, a confluence of political and emotional forces enacted through specific acts of communication battered at me, temporarily affecting my ability to concentrate. The conversations I held with Members early in the week were more scattered and less organized than usual. As I became aware of the disruptions in my ability to focus I managed to re-group and re-establish clarity of purpose for the later conversations and my first observation.
I have been at the crux of discursive forces like this before. There are different ways to represent this juncture in academic literature. I am most familiar with it as a storming phase of group development, which I envision as the clash between discourses (the momentum of past trajectories of articulated experience, perception, and understanding) and dialogue (the cooperative interaction by conscious users of these pre-existing discourses in the co-construction of a future-oriented amalgamated discourse). Edgar Allen Poe describes this metaphorically in his short story, The Maelstrom. As a huge swirling whirlpool threatens to suck all objects into void, hope for salvation emerges by careful observation of the most slowly-moving objects. Only these have a chance of avoiding the final flush through a combination of light mass and non-resistance: in human terms, by relaxation and patience.
The trick of survival in a socio-cultural maelstrom is to fix oneself to a couple of moving anchors. I know it sounds like a contradiction, but when everything is in flux, everyone is in fluid motion. In this instance (back in Strasbourg for the first time since 2005), I remembered my interpreting roots as socialized by empowered members of American Deaf Culture, reached out to friends and colleagues met in the U.S. (who, heaven help them, actually like me), and accepted with gratitude the presence of new friends who adopted me without hesitation because, “this is what we do.”
Building trust is hard. I am not sure if it is harder in Europe than in the U.S.? The other day, Topi shared some of the lessons she’s learning in the integration class for immigrants to Belgium. The reason she was given for Belgians’ interpersonal distance – for instance, the way they do not acknowledge your presence when passing on the street – is as an outcome of having so many wars fought over this land. As an American, it is hard for me to wrap my mind around the ever-present lived history of violence across the European continent, especially within the European Parliament where it seems everyone is working very hard to get along. The threat of betrayal is, I guess, never far from mind.
I have thought a bit about “friends” and “enemies” as this research project has unfolded: the fear that I might be a bad guy, or maybe even a journalist, is a fascinating development. I am teasing with the emphasis; I understand that the matter of representation is serious. In fact, the question came up four years ago as well and I wrote about it in this post on critical or applied ethnography. With action learning, I have landed somewhere in the middle of those two methodologies, as well as extending from action research’s customary fields (education largely, business next), and initiating as a solo actor hoping to engage stakeholder groups.
Update:
Now (23 March 2009), there is tentative engagement in a few directions. A number of small gestures – both visible and private – suggest the possibility that a few seeds may take root.

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We lingered as long as we possibly could at the last day’s luncheon after sharing brief updates on research projects concerning European Union institutions. Not only did we have the desire “to stick with the event” (de pluckers belaven, if I got the Dutch right) but also with each other. I keep hoping that mingling will enable the spontaneous growth of new neural pathways as well as strengthen interpersonal and professional relationships.

There is incredible diversity across our projects.
I listen and wonder.
I listen explicitly for information and insights that can aid my project, and I wonder: if we were to compose an epistemic community, what expertise would compose our authoritative field? Let me be clear: this is not what we are charged with doing. Each of us is responsible for an individual project on a particular topic within a specific discipline. But if we were supposed to come up with something together, or rather – if we imagined that we do constitute a group with collective influence, what “knowledge and causal beliefs about knowledge” did we enact, and how might these cohere into “a force for change”? [Quoting Dr. Mai'a Cross as she explained the concept of an epistemic community.]
Maggie pegged me to start, which – in retrospect (from my point-of-view, grin) – was an act of strategic genius. Despite the fact that I had prepared a handout, my presentation was felt rambling and disorganized. My self-consciousness increased as one neatly-organized description after another followed in steady procession. Uncomfortable, I wondered, why is my style so different? Is “style” the best label? Does “style” adequately capture the distinction in presentation format – if there is one – or mask it? There is a stylistic component: I like to present along the same lines as I learn (backward chaining). This may be an anti-academic mode. I could, for instance, do a better job of establishing the context in order for others to grasp why the particular details I’ve chosen are relevant. But as soon as I have this thought I realize why I resist doing it – even to the point of being aware (not always, but sometimes) that I am deviating from what is expected, normatively, within the academic community. I resist conformity on the essential principle of communication theory as always contingent: there is no one, singular context any more than there is ever only one, singular meaning.
Here my desire to be a practitioner comes into conflict with my desire to be a scholar. The interpretive range opened up by refusing to pre-establish context enables (I hypothesize) creativity in the co-construction of shared knowledge. The conscious choice I am making is between enabling the momentum of an historical trajectory and seeking co-incidental links for a future unfolding. Rather than beginning in linear, chronological time with an overview of how the research/knowledge field has already been constructed, I choose to begin with an immediate encounter and then tack accordingly pending the live interaction as it occurs. Thus, my presentation was given within a different temporal paradigm than the presentations of my peers. An exchange with Scott crystallized (in my thinking) the different orientations to time: not only am I working on a different temporal scale (as noted by Nell a few days prior) than most of my colleagues, but I am also working in a different temporal paradigm. My analysis is projected into the future (the co-creation and maintenance of intercultural communication practices with their implicit relationships and shared identifications) rather than compared or contrasted with the relatively concurrent present or situated historical past. If I had been recording, I think there would be evidence in the tense structure of our utterances. I presented simultaneous interpretation as a powerful means for developing multilingual culture in the future and Scott argued that “it doesn’t work that way” by citing what has occurred before.
This tension between what has gone before and what may come was highlighted during Dr. Carolyn Ban’s presentation on public service motivation in the European Commission. In the midst of that project she is speculating about a two-way, reciprocal effect within the European Commission as a result of the 2004 Enlargement. While it is well-established that new people coming into an organization socialize to the norms of the organization, it is also true that organizations change under certain conditions – such as a change in management or an increase in size of staff, for instance, the influx of a significant number of new people, at all levels.
Dr. Ban’s anecdotes and descriptions suggested to me a nice fit with the interpretive schema of critical discourse analysis that I use in my work. While the discursive and interactional trajectories of past organizational cultural practices imbue momentum (one can think of this in terms of force), new configurations in the present can alter the direction, shape, and effective impact or outcome of those energies. Some of the shifts can be attributed to direct causes, while other shifts may occur indirectly, over time, from the interaction of a variety of actors who may or may not be intending to work together toward a common goal or collective purpose.
For instance, large-scale, long-term changes like the re-organization of Europe from embattled nation-states to a transnational union may be accomplished more effectively through indirect, uncoordinated events than by intentional design. To be specific, Justin is investigating the possibility of a leapfrog effect in the legal realm as local courts bypass national courts to fight battles in the European Court of Justice. His project is geared toward recognizing and explaining processes that lead to unintended (not deliberately planned) effects. This is different than Dr. Cross’s work on the defense experts working on European harmonization in internal security, although I find the two projects similar in illustrating behind-the-scenes (but not secret) processes contributing to stronger transnational political unity in effect, regardless of the status of independent national sovereignty.
The realms of law and internal security are top down mechanisms of social change. Vanja, meanwhile, is assessing the effectiveness of social policy implementation in the area of racial/ethnic discrimination. The policy is top-down, but the implementation seems (as I conceptualize it) to require lateral application. I think this is similar to Dr. Amina Merchant’s analysis of the interactions of health care policy with health care delivery. Both of these projects demonstrate reciprocity between social implementation of policy and the institutionalization of policy.
The dynamic fact of reciprocity suggests parallels between the diffuse actors in these two broad fields of nondiscrimination training and health care delivery and the actors in Dr. Ban’s study who are concentrated within a single – albeit very large – organization. Jen’s analysis of citizen participation in processes of legislation regarding climate change will likely demonstrate reciprocity as well, although her angle seems even more laterally-oriented than either Vanja’s or Dr. Merchant’s projects. The contrast in relative position of the key actors in the lateral components of these research projects illustrates the point that how context is perceived varies: it is contingent upon the role or status of the actors and/or the researcher in relation to the topic. Most of the projects are explicitly engaged with the effects of action ‘down’; Jen’s study is more along the lines of action ‘up.’
This reminds me of a conversation with Daren about the average person in Hungary, who has only felt the effect of joining the EU in negative ways, such as the shock that the small shop their family has run for generations is out of compliance with sanitation requirements.
The following passage from Bruce Benderson’s, The Romanian, captures this point perfectly:

Yet not even the blessing of the old man can save Romulus – and perhaps the old man himself – from that great shift towards the West and its materialistic values that was accelerated by the fall of Communism. It’s a shift that will continue as the European Union pushes eastward, until perhaps even the old man or his son finds its tentacles at his doorstep, questioning his children’s health and education, suggesting better ways to till his field, frowning at his unlicensed plum brandy or grinningly promoting cartoon versions of his seasonal rituals, as designed by an ethnographer in Bucharest. (2006, p. 231)

Given the inexorability with which top-down processes are effecting daily life, it is no wonder that the European Union is having a difficult time generating citizen enthusiasm, much less any sense of common identity or sentiment, for shifting from the nation-based anchor of self-consciousness to a regional or continental shared identity. The attempt to use language policy to achieve a new kind of hybrid consciousness of particular nation and Europe-as-a-whole is premised upon the historical use of language standardization to compel bonding. By most accounts, this strategy is not accomplishing the desired result. While it is true that learning another language expands your cognitive capacities, it does not necessarily follow that you become more tolerant, wiser, and/or develop relational bonds with others who are substantially different than yourself.
It may not seem obvious that there’s a connection with another Fulbright Fellow’s work on public transportation, but in lauding the example of Strasbourg, Jason explained how the mayor “framed the debate” by posing the question: underground or tram?
She argued for trams on the surface because “then you change the way people interact with the city” (emphasis added). What is now a tangible exemplar came about as an outgrowth of language use (framing the debate) and interactional practice (e.g., cars left outside the city center). If I remember correctly, the original framing of the debate was a campaign strategy which resulted in the Mayor’s election (or re-election). This suggests another lateral process which led in a bottom-up kind of way to the formation of city policy.
All of this effort in attempting to construct coherence among research projects and the processes under study suggest that the principles that might be most relevant to deliberately structuring a re-construction of identity may not reside in trying to impose or extend the cultivated consciousnesses of the cosmopolitan elite but rather in the modes of “translating” institutional infrastructures interactively with the middle- and working-class consciousnesses of the general populace.

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The first speaker at the European Commission closed his presentation with three points:

• There is need and desire for the European Union.
• Europe is constantly changing, the fact is that Europe is not static but dynamic.
• There is welcome for critics who can distinguish between the target and the way.

The goal of a unified Europe, explained the officer, is not up for debate. “How do we reach it effectively and efficiently” is, however, open for critical engagement. For instance, he posed three general areas for input: organization, structure, and behavior. Such can be discussed – at least in theory! – by outsiders. The precisely-focused College of Europe admitted four Americans last year, demonstrating the institutional intention described by Dr. Michele Chang, “to be open to non-Europeans as well.” Listening to the presentations on EU institutions over the past four days, I’ve noticed trends in the material we’ve been given and also been aware of the range of reactions and engagement among the group of Fulbrighters composing the target audience. I, for instance, am attuned to rhetoric and evidence of inclusion and consideration of alternative ways of thinking – clearly in relation to my own project but also concerning which of my peers’ questions garner the most active and engaged responses.
At least some of my colleagues are more inclined to question the overall vision of the European Union than I am. “I feel like I was just given the cup of koolaid,” said one of my peers after the Commission presentation, A “European Moment” in EU/US Relations? The hyperbole referred specifically to the claim that development aid simply must be given (despite the fact that most international aid projects fail – certainly historically). I realized that I had accepted the Commission speaker’s distinction between microsocial projects that absolutely have a tangible impact on the ground and macrosocial projects that continue (probably with some notable exceptions) to be bungled. As discussion unfolded, Nell argued that “globalization” is not a fixed destiny – or at least not in only way, along one unalterable path. “There is nothing inevitable about social processes,” she said, “unlike climate change.”
I eavesdropped as this conversation continued with Scott, Max, Chloe, and others. Scott has a knack for (what he himself labeled) indiscrete questions. For instance, is the neighborhood policy (ENP) simply a bone or back-up arrangement of the Common Foreign and Security Policy for those States who fail to become Members of the EU? [Note: the specific link for the CFSP yields a page without information.] Anyway, Scott described what seems to be a belief or attitude that Europe is post post-war – at least this seems pervasive among all the EU officials who have spoken to us. Maybe, I wondered to myself, maybe I am being too readily suckered by the utopian vision and all the disarming openness of these politically smooth presentations? One of the trends I mentioned noticing is how each of the presenters has cast themselves as sharing their personal view of the EU institutions, rather than delivering a canned public relations pitch.
While there may be Euro-skeptics serving as Members of the European Parliament or on the Council of Ministers, there are no skeptics on staff: Europhiles only need apply! No problem – the European Commission is the driver of the entire European Union effort, supplying a rather substantial proportion of the requisite nuts and bolts as well as significant social, legal, and economic engineering knowledge of design and implementation. These are jobs for believers. I am on board despite the counter-views of my colleagues who, it must be acknowledged, may not actually disagree with the vision but rather question its exclusivity. In fact, we may have common cause in this regard. When one fixes one’s gaze on a singular target, there is always the possibility of reifying the boundaries not only of discourse (what can and cannot be said), but also of perception (what can and cannot be sensed). In other words, the path to that fixed hard target can become so commonsensical that internal contradictions and out-of-the-mainstream opportunities may barely be noticed, if they impinge upon awareness at all.
My colleagues may perceive particular selections and deselections (what I think of as an extension of Kenneth Burke’s terministic screen) within their specific fields; I notice them in relation to conceptualizing the benefits and added value of simultaneous interpretation.
For instance, I asked about the use of lingua francas and/or simultaneous interpretation in negotiations with countries outside of the EU, under the European Neighborhood Project. “Let me answer the question this way,” the presenter said. “When we do our evaluation plans, we write twelve reports, ten in English and two, for Tunisia and Morroco, in French.” Hmmm. I wasn’t asking about the written languages, rather the processes of spoken interaction. “In negotiations and emails,” he continued, “these are the languages we use. With some countries it would be easier to speak Russian but they don’t want to.”
When I was talking with Scott later, he said people don’t want to be associated with the Soviet Union, confirming what a Member of the European Parliament told me last week about his own use of Russian. “We [from eastern Europe] all know it,” he explained, “but we don’t use it. Unless I start speaking it and then everyone will switch.”
At the College of Europe, when I asked if there are any courses/experiences training students how to use interpreters, I received a halting answer from one presenter and then a clarification from the other.

“Well uh, they are , uh so we don’t have courses specializing in that area but as I said students are all, they speak more than five languages they are, they are fluent, I think they can easily do that, I don’t, I’ve never been asked that question….” [emphasis added]

“I can add . . . I have a better idea what you’re asking. We don’t use interpretation services at the college. The courses are taught in English, some in French; students are expected to be fluent in both. We offer courses in European studies not in interpreting or translation.”

Right.



Two characteristics of the discourse about simultaneous interpretation in the EU are the conflation with written translation and the assumption of its narrow utility. The former confusion makes sense, as the challenge of making European law equally applicable in all countries despite differences of language and culture is formidable. Not to mention that the daily organization of work must be structured around the pace at which translations of documents for dossiers in progress can be prepared. Still, the frequency with which the matter of simultaneously interpreting spontaneous human communication is assumed to be either the same as, or less important than, the matter of producing written equivalents of legal code indicates a hierarchy that might also constitute an imbalance.
The latter characteristic of discourse about simultaneous interpretation – that it has a limited, utilitarian function – is the larger concern. There is an absolute taken-for-granted quality about most people’s conception of the use and value of simultaneous interpretation (SI): this is characteristic of the vast majority of conversations that I have with anybody about SI. Max helped me draw out one of the implications of this fact. He is working in Sofia, where there is a revival of traditional cultural forms – as is happening in many diverse communities, and is usually understood as a kind of backlash. Max described these group-level shifts as “a balancing dynamic” within large sociopolitical structures – which is exactly how I suggest SI operates socioculturally on the microsocial level.
Lauren shared some of her insights about simultaneous interpretation from a course she took on asylum hearings. Again – if I’m true to the ethnographic imperative – there was a bit of conflation between the processes of SI per se, and the written processes of recording (which is such a huge problem in all asylum proceedings it could be described as a lynchpin of injustice, in direct contradistinction to the ostensive motivation of fairness). Lauren jumped on the fact that interpretation is an on-going process every time we speak with anyone regardless of whether we’re using the same or a different language. Most people do understand that we are always interpreting each other, of course, but this kind of knowledge tends to exist so foundationally that it requires an effort to imagine why remembering matters.

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The Fulbright Commission has arranged a week of seminars for us on the European Union institutions and NATO. The first question to our first presenter, the Legal Secretary to the President of Chamber at the European Court of Justice, involved human rights. The second was from Jacob:

“Is language ever a major problem with all of the interpreters and translators?”

“Yes, of course. It is always a disadvantage if you cannot work in your own language. There are also matters of terminology. For instance, each language has their own connotations on what is ‘a market’. This is also a problem.”

“Are there any prominent cases of misunderstanding at the end of a case when language was the cause?”

“No, not like that.”

“Not like that.” In other words, just like between people speaking the same language with each other, misunderstandings get cleared up along the way. Comments about language and languages in the European Union, however, are nearly always framed in the same way. Language itself is labeled “the problem.” However, this seems to me a matter of mistaking the symptom for the source: the problem (if there is one) is difference. Languages provide the means for recognizing the presence of differences in a communication event, enabling the identification of key differences, especially in the realm of culture (e.g., traditions, history, and connotations of logic or belief). Rather than being a barrier between people, different languages are the bridge – even (possibly most importantly) when the first stones in the bridge are premised upon misunderstanding rather than the automatic sharing of assumptions.
Everyone was intrigued by the simultaneous interpretation (English, French, Italian, and Slovene) during our observation of an appeal. “I think its so strange,” exclaimed Jamie at one point, “how you can talk in two different languages to each other. It’s hilarious! With the numbers, she asks in German, he answers in French, and they understand!” This form of multilingualism is only possible with simultaneous interpretation, a cultural communication practice that preserves difference while constituting relationship across that difference at one and the same time.
It was a treat for me to sit with Jamie in the courtroom because he knows German. “Can you hear the different fluency between them?” he asked me, comparing the defending advocate and the prosecutor from the European Commission? No, I couldn’t, but his identification of structural and grammatical errors made by the prosecutor made me wonder why she made the choice to use German instead of her own national language. Could it be because the lead judge spoke German? (This is a logic popular in the European Parliament – to make the polite gesture of speaking directly in the language of the person you wish to address.) Later, someone (Colin?) suggested it was because she works for the Commission and may be under pressure to use one of the standard working languages. No one was sure of her mother tongue, but it was guessed to be Slavonic . . .
Both Mai’a and Scott commented that I seem to be working against the grain of the official EU language learning policy, which is for everyone to learn at least three languages: their mother tongue (presumably the official national language), a vehicular language – such as English, French or German, and a third language for pleasure or personal reasons. I would like to dispel this perception. I am not against language learning; never have been and never will be. I do, however, think language learning is only one way to achieve the stretching of consciousness that enables a person to interact peaceably across a wide range of cultural, religious, language-based, ideological, and socioeconomic differences. It will be decades and a generation or three before the goal of minimal trilingualism is achieved throughout Europe, and then it will only be achieved by citizens who grow up within the EU’s educational system. What about everybody else?
My argument is that having only one strategy for producing a pan-European sense of identity is itself monological, and that its programmatic outcome is a kind of parallel monolingualism. The goal of being able to speak directly with those persons who know one of the same languages as you do neglects the situation of needing to communicate with those with whom you do not share a common language. There are now and will always be situations in which there is no common language; people need to know how to deal with this circumstance too – and perhaps even more urgently. I am not posing an either/or dichotomy – that would be another instance of a monologic. I am suggesting a supplementary and complementary policy based on the cultivation of a common cultural communication practice of using simultaneous interpretation.
The logic is counterintuitive because the predominant experience of the cosmopolitan elite involves a highly-technological style of simultaneous interpretation (and their own pleasure in the joys of linguistically-expanded consciousness). There is nothing wrong with the style, per se, except for some potentially limiting assumptions such as, this is the only way it can be done, or the only purposes, or the only places where it is important enough to matter. Yet it is possible to see simultaneous interpretation in three-dimensional terms. One Member of the European Parliament described it as a layer cake during a conversation last week, gesturing with both hands from top to bottom:

As we departed the courtroom today, people commented on the interpreters – how they “really got into it” as evidenced by gestures, how the gesturing varied by language, how the interpretations captured not only content but also tone. Stephanie said, “You could tell the first lawyer was irritated at the beginning of his speech and you could hear it in the interpreter’s voice, too.” The best moment for me was when the head judge asked the prosecutor a specific question regarding one of the points made by the defense. She responds and the judge asks again. They are both speaking German. At one point she answers before the interpretation is completed because she has understood the question directly. After three attempts, she gives a response that satisfies the judge. “Ah, that’s the way you meant it.”
Meaning is never as clear cut as we want it to be. Tim nailed this when we were talking about the utility of quantum mechanics to provide a metaphor for processes of making meaning. As we were talking, I said,

“We’re both making meaning of this conversation.”
“But is it the same meaning?” he asked.
“Exactly!” I responded, delighted. “But we assume so, and call that understanding.”

Misunderstanding is also a legitimate way to begin a relationship, but we (particular in the West, see Chang, Deconstructing Communication) tend to valorize understanding. In the layer cake of communication, we are constantly selecting this layer over that one, but what if interlocutors choose different layers? If there is a pattern in the selection, we need to be able to recognize it. One way to do so is to do something similar to what Nandita is doing in molecular biology: overlaying, transcribing, and translating the DNA-RNA alphabets of different species to see what comes to the foreground.

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