Vulnerability in cross-cultural encounters: Strategies of hybridization, negotiation and reformulation in mediated spoken interactions in migration contexts

Abstract

Vulnerabilities and ‘gatekeeping’ asymmetries often emerge throughout interactions taking place in institutional settings. This is especially true in cross-cultural interactions occurring in migration contexts, which are often characterized by an asymmetrical power distribution between the participants involved, namely Western experts vs. non-Western migrants, challenging a successful meaning negotiation. Starting from the assumption that mediation processes are central in migration contexts, where speakers from different sociolinguistic backgrounds interact in multilingual environments where there is an increasing use of lingua francas such as ELF, the paper will explore those pragmalinguistic processes and behaviours challenging successful meaning negotiation or leading to communication failure in such intercultural and multilingual contexts. A discourse analysis of spoken interactions involving asylum-seekers, language mediators and professionals unveiled participants’ use of strategies of hybridization, negotiation, and reformulation, activated in such cross-cultural mediation encounters, where meaning is negotiated at different levels – linguistic, paralinguistic and extralinguistic – variously and creatively exploited by multilingual speakers. The ultimate aim of the exploration of spoken specialized discourse, related to medical and legal integration, to mediated migration narratives, as well as to cross-cultural representations of traumatic experiences, is to promote intercultural awareness, cultural diversity and plurilingualism, and to raise concern towards current ethical issues connected to identity and displacement in the new multilingual and multicultural European societies.