Double-mouthed discourse: Interpreting, framing, and participant roles1

Abstract

In this article I examine multilingual displays in a Congolese Pentecostal church in Cape Town, South Africa. I focus on the simultaneous interpreting of the pastor's French sermon into English. I argue that the interpreting activity performed at church is used as a powerful interactional device to dramatize and shape the pastor's sermon. A close examination of participant roles shows that although these may appear to be predetermined by the interpretee‐interpreter format of the sermon, speaking roles are actually fluid and negotiated. I submit that an important role of the church interpreter is to convey the pastor's inspiration from the Holy Spirit and reach out to the potential audience absent from the here and now of the service. His high emotional engagement helps convey this inspiration prospectively to the audience and retroactively to the pastor himself.

Monolingual ideologies and multilingual practices in small claims court: the case of Spanish-speaking arbitrators

“…If English is seen as more appropriate for court proceedings than Spanish, as indexing 'authority' and 'respect', then the use of court interpreters in cases with all Spanish-speaking participants serves to preserve these indexicalities. This finding is similar to one made by Vigouroux (2010) in her study of the use of simultaneous interpreting to English in the services of a Congolese Pentecostal Church in South Africa. In particular, Vigouroux (2010, p. 365) argues that this interpreting activity does not serve to bridge a communicative gap, but rather 'can be understood as a process that elevates the authoritative ground on which the pastor speaks to conform to frames of expectations'.…”

Infrastructures of superdiversity: Conviviality and language in an Antwerp neighborhood

“…Even studies on various forms of performance in public space, including (perhaps surprisingly) those of Erving Goffman, tend to pay only superficial attention to the non-arbitrary nature of the actual linguistic resources employed and deployed in such events (e.g. Simpson, 2011; but compare Vigouroux, 2010). I hope to have made a sound case for paying more and more structured attention to it, especially in studies on conviviality and especially in attempts toward comparison.…”

Translation as discrimination: Sociolinguistics and inequality in multilingual institutional contexts

“…Power asymmetries in translation have also been addressed by scholars who have examined interpreter-mediated interaction using approaches influenced by conversation analysis and Goffman's participation framework. Such studies have investigated the communicative practices of interpreters and their impact on the interactions in which they participate, as well as the social identity of interpreters as intermediaries in language contact (Davidson 2000; Berk-Seligson 2009; Angermeyer 2009; Vigouroux 2010). This is arguably the area where the encounter between sociolinguistics and translation studies has been the closest, though findings from such research have not always had much uptake in the wider field of sociolinguistics.…”