Community interpreters versus intercultural mediators

This article compares the professional profile of community interpreters to that of a particular group of intercultural mediators who work as non-professional, untrained interpreters, mainly in healthcare settings. Through a textual comparison of 13 deontological documents for community interpreters and intercultural mediators, this article investigates differences in the ethical positioning of these two profiles. The results show that while the codes of ethics of community interpreters tend to emphasize impartiality, the documents defining the emerging profile of intercultural mediators position advocacy more prominently. Beyond the differences in ethical positioning, the article also considers other reasons for the formation of this new profile and outlines several challenges related to the partial overlap between the two profiles, which include distorted definitions of the interpreter’s competences and performance, conceptual confusion in the research literature, and mismatched expectations of language services consumers.

‘There’s nothing I can do’: Bad faith and the narrative maintenance of ethical identifications

It has often been emphasized in narrative sociology that individuals strive to present themselves in a good, ethical light and that they attempt to make themselves the protagonists of their own stories. However, less work has been done on what happens when individuals are confronted with a necessary contradiction in their narrative that conflicts with their subjective ethical positioning. In this article, I use evidence from my qualitative research into the anarcho-punk subculture in Philadelphia (2016) to show that in such a situation, the narrator may use what Jean-Paul Sartre called ‘bad faith’, the denial of personal responsibility or choice, to protect their ethical identification through narrative.

“Sexual compulsivity”, “sexual addictions”, or “hypersexuality”? An overview of contrasting perspectives

Many labels have been used and are currently in use referring to “sexual compulsivity”, “sexual addictions”, and “hypersexuality”, depending on the theoretical and ethical positioning. This issue has been a subject of much controversy and debate within sexology, psychosexual therapy, psychiatry, and psychotherapy, triggering strong reactions and opposing viewpoints. This article discusses the historically significant as well as currently prevailing views on the origins, diagnostic criteria, symptomatology, and proposed forms of treatment of this phenomenon. Points of connections as well as contrast will be highlighted amongst different perspectives, and implications will be drawn for psychotherapy assessment and treatment.

Online readers between the camps: A Text World Theory analysis of ethical positioning in We Need to Talk About Kevin

Recent investigations into ethical experiences of fictional narratives have discussed the ‘positions’ that readers adopt in relation to the author, narrator and characters . This article applies Text World Theory as a means of accounting for the ethical experience of Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin. Qualitative analysis of a sample of 150 online reader responses on the reading-based social network Goodreads reveals a range of ethical responses to the novel positioned between two interpretative ‘camps’ and the nature/nurture debate they reflect with regards to the character, Kevin. Drawing from this dataset, I explore how stylistic features of Shriver’s epistolary novel could be seen to influence readers’ ethical positioning in relation to the multiple perspectives presented at different levels of its narrative structure. As a result of the analysis, I propose that an account of ethical experience using Text World Theory may benefit from the concept of ‘construal’ in Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar. By modeling readers’ variable attention to multiple minds, including their own, a cognitive grammatical model of construal may support an understanding of ethical interpretation as an interpersonal experience within particular reading contexts.

The ethical positioning of the interpreter

As a participant in interpersonal communications, the interpreter is subject to a number of different and sometimes conflicting ethical constraints. It may be argued that the interpreter negotiates between three main ethical spheres: that of the professions they provide interpreting service to, that of the interpreting profession, and the personal ethics of the interpreter himself.<p>This article compares the ways translators and interpreters define their ethical positions in terms of paratexts and framing. The author argues that while paratexts are not available for the interpreter to define and delimit his ethical position, there are other factors that effectively frame this position. These factors are either controlled by the interpreter himself, encoded in the codes of his professional association or stipulated by the regulations of the profession that he provides interpreting service to. By examining how such factors intersect, the author believes that it is ultimately personal ethics that prevail in the ethical positioning of the interpreter. From such an understanding the article seeks in particular to define the ways in which an interpreter frames her personal ethical position in the interpreting setting.<p>