Intercultural Scale Adaptation Stages, Language and Culture Adaptation: Updated Guideline

In the late 1950s, Iraqi Jews were either forced or chose to leave Iraq for Israel. Finding it impossible to continue writing in Arabic in Israel, many Iraqi Jewish novelists faced the literary challenge of switching to Hebrew. Focusing on the literary works of the writers Shimon Ballas, Sami Michael and Eli Amir, this book examines their use of their native Iraqi Arabic in their Hebrew works. It examines the influence of Arabic language and culture and explores questions of language, place and belonging from the perspective of sociolinguistics and multilingualism. In addition, the book applies stylistics as a framework to investigate the range of linguistic phenomena that can be found in these exophonic texts, such as code-switching, borrowing, language and translation strategies. This new stylistic framework for analysing exophonic texts offers a future model for the study of other languages. The social and political implications of this dilemma, as it finds expression in creative writing, are also manifold. In an age of mass migration and population displacement, the conflicted loyalties explored in this book through the prism of Arabic and Hebrew are relevant in a range of linguistic contexts.

Download Full-text

Writing Time in Metaphors

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474423939.003.0004 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Jennifer J. Smith

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

The United States ◽

Western United States ◽

Entire System ◽

Language And Culture ◽

Space Race ◽

Do So

Coherence of place often exists alongside irregularities in time in cycles, and chapter three turns to cycles linked by temporal markers. Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (1950) follows a linear chronology and describes the exploration, conquest, and repopulation of Mars by humans. Conversely, Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine (1984) jumps back and forth across time to narrate the lives of interconnected families in the western United States. Bradbury’s cycle invokes a confluence of historical forces—time as value-laden, work as a calling, and travel as necessitating standardized time—and contextualizes them in relation to anxieties about the space race. Erdrich’s cycle invokes broader, oppositional conceptions of time—as recursive and arbitrary and as causal and meaningful—to depict time as implicated in an entire system of measurement that made possible the destruction and exploitation of the Chippewa people. Both volumes understand the United States to be preoccupied with imperialist impulses. Even as they critique such projects, they also point to the tenacity with which individuals encounter these systems, and they do so by creating “interstitial temporalities,” which allow them to navigate time at the crossroads of language and culture.

Download Full-text

Multilingual interactions in clinical dental education: A focus on mediated interpreting

Communication & Medicine ◽

10.1558/cam.v8i3.197 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 8 (3) ◽

pp. 197-210

Author(s):

Susan M. Bridges ◽

Cynthia K.Y. Yiu ◽

Colman P. McGrath

Keyword(s):

Staff Development ◽

Healthcare Team ◽

Clinical Settings ◽

Clinical Communication ◽

Dental Surgery ◽

Language And Culture ◽

Medical Interpreting ◽

Essential Resource ◽

Intercultural Mediators

In clinical dental consultations in multilingual contexts, medical interpreting is often performed by the supporting staff as part of routine triadic formulations. As academic dentistry becomes increasingly internationalised, issues of language and culture add to the interactional complexity of clinical communication and education. A multivariate approach was adopted to investigate one case of multilingualism in dentistry in Asia. Collection of both survey (n=86) and interactional data provided empirical evidence regarding language use and language demands across integrated Polyclinics. Descriptive statistics of Dental Surgery Assistant (DSA) perception data and conversation analysis (CA) of mediated interpretation indicate that, as members of the oral healthcare team, DSAs in Hong Kong are an essential resource in their role of intercultural mediators between patients and clinicians, both staff and students. Discussion of sociolinguistic notions of place-as-location and place-as-meaning supports a wider conceptualisation of the role of support staff as interpreters in clinical settings. Implications are drawn for policy, curriculum and staff development.

Download Full-text