In our web-mediated semio-sphere, new media can help obviate lingua-cultural hurdles in interpersonal and intergroup communication, especially in the landscape of the (multi-ethnic) socio-legal care. Relevant examples are the new interactive websites for providing legal advice and for helping people fill out the required forms, by reporting events in a legally acceptable and effective style. Such websites are proliferating in many States of the U.S.A. and are more especially dedicated to low-income people, and to their non-profit advocates. They display very user-friendly interfaces, and, most importantly, are often bilingual. As part of an ongoing research project, the present study analyses the ‘Kansas Safety Plan and Protection Order Information and Resources for Kansas’ website, which provides ‘must-know’ information about Kansas protection orders, both in English and in Spanish (Hispanics being the largest ethnic group in the U.S.). Protective Order (PO) applicants in the U.S. are usually battered women of various ethnic origin. A protective order application interview (POI), conducted by socio-legal professionals, is what victims of domestic violence have to pass through when they decide to ask for assistance in social or legal institutional settings. Such interviews contribute substantially to informing the judges’ conclusions, thus affecting the applicants’ future lives. Moreover, POIs entail lay vs. professional exchanges where U.S. Anglo value system can clash with different ethnic beliefs and identities. Hence, POIs can be face-threatening speech events, especially considering the applicants’ limited English capabilities – given their various ethnic origin. In particular, qualitative data from POIs were analysed in the context of these dialogistic interviewers/interviewees encounters. However, as the present analysis will highlight, effective discursive support is not easily provided by the socio-legal professionals, though its relevance is emphasized in literature, due to limitations in terms of time and human resources. Instead, ‘Kansas Safety Plan and Protection Order Information’ website provides a guided interview which explains important safety considerations, necessary qualifications, court procedures, possible relief, resources and other considerations which are necessary prior to seeking a PO, and does so in a simple, factual language, both in the English and the Spanish versions. Our comparative analysis of both ‘human-conducted’ and computer-mediated POIs highlights how and to what extent the latter provide easily accessible, effective information on and guide through legal resources, also to applicants with limited English skills, in a non-face-threatening style. Thus applicants can be consistently facilitated to overcome lingua-cultural difficulties by such computer-mediated POIs, whereas ‘human-conducted’ POIs, not infrequently, fail to achieve such results. In this perspective, discourse-based studies can help to highlight the need for change in administering POIs. PROVISIONAL REFERENCES Bhatia, V., Candlin, C., & Engberg, J. 2008. Legal Discourse across Cultures and Systems. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Bondi, M., Bamford, J. (eds). 2006. Managing interaction in professional discourse. Roma: Officina Edizioni. Candlin C N, Bhatia, V. K and Jensen C. 2002. Must the Worlds Collide? Professional and Academic Discourses in the Study and Practice of Law. In G. Cortese and P. Riley (eds), Domain-specific English: Textual Practices Across Communities and Classrooms, Bern: Peter Lang, pp 101-114. Candlin C.N. 2009, “Preface”, in V.J. Bhatia - W. Cheng - B. Du- Babcock - J. Lung (eds.) Language for Professional Communication: Research, Practice & Training, Hong Kong SAR China: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, pp. 6-10. Durfee, A. 2009. Victim Narratives, Legal Representation, and Domestic Violence Civil Protection Orders. Feminist Criminology, Vol. 4 N 1, pp. 7-31. Erez, et al., Electronic Monitoring of Domestic Violence Cases—A Study of Two Bilateral Programs (2004). Herring, S. C. et al. 2003. Women and Children Last: The Discursive Construction of Weblogs. In L. Gurak (Ed). Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs. U Think: University of Minnesota. Jakobson, R. 1971. Language in relation to other communication systems. Selected Writings. Vol. 2. The Hague: Mouton, 697–708. Keilitz, et al., 1997. Civil Protection Orders: The Benefits and Limitations for Victims of Domestic Violence Lakoff, R. 1975. Language and Women's Place. New York: Harper and Row. Lotman, J .1990. Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. London: I. B. Tauris. Matoesian, G. M., 2001. Law and the Language of Identity: Discourse in the William Kennedy Smith Rape Trial. New York: Oxford University Press. Perez, B., Torres-Guzman M. 1995. Learning In Two Worlds: An Integrated Spanish/English Biliteracy Approach. Reading: Addison Wesley . Trinch S. L. 2006. Bilingualism and representation: Locating Spanish-English contact in legal institutional memory. Language in Society 35:4. Trinch. S. 2007. Deconstructing the ‘‘stakes’’ in high stakes gatekeeping interviews: Battered women and narration. Journal of Pragmatics 39 1895–1918. Wolfram, W. , Kohn M. E., Callahan-Price E. 2011. Southern-Bred Hispanic English: An Emerging Socioethnic Variety, in J. Michnowicz and R. Dodsworth (eds) Selected Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics. Cascadilla Proceedings Project, Somerville, MA.

New media, new landscapes in social care communication

ABBAMONTE, Lucia;TESSUTO, Girolamo
2013

Abstract

In our web-mediated semio-sphere, new media can help obviate lingua-cultural hurdles in interpersonal and intergroup communication, especially in the landscape of the (multi-ethnic) socio-legal care. Relevant examples are the new interactive websites for providing legal advice and for helping people fill out the required forms, by reporting events in a legally acceptable and effective style. Such websites are proliferating in many States of the U.S.A. and are more especially dedicated to low-income people, and to their non-profit advocates. They display very user-friendly interfaces, and, most importantly, are often bilingual. As part of an ongoing research project, the present study analyses the ‘Kansas Safety Plan and Protection Order Information and Resources for Kansas’ website, which provides ‘must-know’ information about Kansas protection orders, both in English and in Spanish (Hispanics being the largest ethnic group in the U.S.). Protective Order (PO) applicants in the U.S. are usually battered women of various ethnic origin. A protective order application interview (POI), conducted by socio-legal professionals, is what victims of domestic violence have to pass through when they decide to ask for assistance in social or legal institutional settings. Such interviews contribute substantially to informing the judges’ conclusions, thus affecting the applicants’ future lives. Moreover, POIs entail lay vs. professional exchanges where U.S. Anglo value system can clash with different ethnic beliefs and identities. Hence, POIs can be face-threatening speech events, especially considering the applicants’ limited English capabilities – given their various ethnic origin. In particular, qualitative data from POIs were analysed in the context of these dialogistic interviewers/interviewees encounters. However, as the present analysis will highlight, effective discursive support is not easily provided by the socio-legal professionals, though its relevance is emphasized in literature, due to limitations in terms of time and human resources. Instead, ‘Kansas Safety Plan and Protection Order Information’ website provides a guided interview which explains important safety considerations, necessary qualifications, court procedures, possible relief, resources and other considerations which are necessary prior to seeking a PO, and does so in a simple, factual language, both in the English and the Spanish versions. Our comparative analysis of both ‘human-conducted’ and computer-mediated POIs highlights how and to what extent the latter provide easily accessible, effective information on and guide through legal resources, also to applicants with limited English skills, in a non-face-threatening style. Thus applicants can be consistently facilitated to overcome lingua-cultural difficulties by such computer-mediated POIs, whereas ‘human-conducted’ POIs, not infrequently, fail to achieve such results. In this perspective, discourse-based studies can help to highlight the need for change in administering POIs. PROVISIONAL REFERENCES Bhatia, V., Candlin, C., & Engberg, J. 2008. Legal Discourse across Cultures and Systems. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Bondi, M., Bamford, J. (eds). 2006. Managing interaction in professional discourse. Roma: Officina Edizioni. Candlin C N, Bhatia, V. K and Jensen C. 2002. Must the Worlds Collide? Professional and Academic Discourses in the Study and Practice of Law. In G. Cortese and P. Riley (eds), Domain-specific English: Textual Practices Across Communities and Classrooms, Bern: Peter Lang, pp 101-114. Candlin C.N. 2009, “Preface”, in V.J. Bhatia - W. Cheng - B. Du- Babcock - J. Lung (eds.) Language for Professional Communication: Research, Practice & Training, Hong Kong SAR China: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, pp. 6-10. Durfee, A. 2009. Victim Narratives, Legal Representation, and Domestic Violence Civil Protection Orders. Feminist Criminology, Vol. 4 N 1, pp. 7-31. Erez, et al., Electronic Monitoring of Domestic Violence Cases—A Study of Two Bilateral Programs (2004). Herring, S. C. et al. 2003. Women and Children Last: The Discursive Construction of Weblogs. In L. Gurak (Ed). Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs. U Think: University of Minnesota. Jakobson, R. 1971. Language in relation to other communication systems. Selected Writings. Vol. 2. The Hague: Mouton, 697–708. Keilitz, et al., 1997. Civil Protection Orders: The Benefits and Limitations for Victims of Domestic Violence Lakoff, R. 1975. Language and Women's Place. New York: Harper and Row. Lotman, J .1990. Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. London: I. B. Tauris. Matoesian, G. M., 2001. Law and the Language of Identity: Discourse in the William Kennedy Smith Rape Trial. New York: Oxford University Press. Perez, B., Torres-Guzman M. 1995. Learning In Two Worlds: An Integrated Spanish/English Biliteracy Approach. Reading: Addison Wesley . Trinch S. L. 2006. Bilingualism and representation: Locating Spanish-English contact in legal institutional memory. Language in Society 35:4. Trinch. S. 2007. Deconstructing the ‘‘stakes’’ in high stakes gatekeeping interviews: Battered women and narration. Journal of Pragmatics 39 1895–1918. Wolfram, W. , Kohn M. E., Callahan-Price E. 2011. Southern-Bred Hispanic English: An Emerging Socioethnic Variety, in J. Michnowicz and R. Dodsworth (eds) Selected Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics. Cascadilla Proceedings Project, Somerville, MA.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11591/211200
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