My stance vis-a-vis the UMass Amherst administration’s decision to grant an honorary degree to President Bush’s ex-chief-of-staff, Andrew Card, was pre-established before the event was known. I was hired to interpret the graduate commencement ceremony at least a month before the decision about Card was announced.
I witnessed the swell of protest activity from a distance, observing. I did sign the petition, but my active participation was constrained by my paid role, by my work. Of course, I could have done many things, and probably could have “gotten away” with many things – but to do so would have compromised the deep commitment of professional interpreters to provide linguistic accessibility in the most impartial way possible.
Still – the challenge of how consumed some quality planning time between my teammate and me. We were fortunate to be aware of the scope of the planned protest and thus were able to strategize effectively. It so transpired, therefore, that my partner interpreted what she could make out of speech concerning Card, and I interpreted the protesters chanting. A satisfactory, ethical, and impartial arrangement. In fact, the protest was so loud and persistent that audience members watching the
anti-honoraria
by Steph • May 27th, 2007
Backdrop
by Steph • January 8th, 2007
As I’m going about formulating a frame for my dissertation research, it becomes clearer that it matters where I draw the line between what will be “in” the project and what must remain “outside” of it. I always knew this, but the difference now, perhaps, is a better sense (?) of what is do-able, particularly in terms of promising an outcome. I don’t mean predicting a particular or specific result, because I do not know, now, the answers to my research problem. I do mean guaranteeing with some assurance that the problem is significant and the results of rigorous examination will be worthwhile and beneficial to the narrow field of language and interpretation studies as well as to (I hope) a broader social science. But I cannot say how the leap from the subfield of interpretation to larger fields will occur. Probably there are several possibilities. I don’t want to foreclose some by too close an interest in others. I cannot see any of them; I only intuit that the connections will become evident.
That penultimate goal must wait. I have been learning a different kind of trust the past few years and I
Blink
by Steph • January 7th, 2007
I wrote a while back about thin-slicing. I have nearly finished Gladwell’s book on rapid cognition. He spends a chapter discussing the face, linking the ability to discern emotional expression as akin to mind-reading: in his words, “the physiological basis of how we thin-slice other people” (213). Face recognition and object recognition are usually handled by two different parts of the brain, respectively the fusiform gyrus and inferior temporal gyrus (219), but more interesting to me are two things: the interplay between voluntary and involuntary facial muscle responses, and the evidence that simply making certain facial expressions generates corresponding physiological states.
All of us can control our expressions to varying degrees, but people exert this control only after our faces have involuntarily displayed our emotional reaction. He describes several examples, including a slow-motion microexpressions of Kato Kaelin looking like “a snarling dog” during the O.J. Simpson trial (211), the smirking double-agent, Harold “Kim” Philby (211-212), “I’m a bad guy” Bill Clinton (205-206), and a psychiatric patient, Mary (208-209), citing research from Paul Ekman, Silvan Tomkins, Wallace Friesen, and Robert Levenson (singly and in various combinations). “We can use our voluntary muscular system to try to suppress those involuntary
powers of ten
by Steph • March 26th, 2006
Here’s another item I’m sure I’ve posted before but obviously didn’t catalog or code correctly for later retrieval. At any rate, I saw this short video on the powers of ten when I interpreted a science class some years back for upper elementary school students (possibly fifth-graders). I find it a useful metaphor for this notion of social metonymy that I keep trying to articulate as a means of linking the microsocial with the macrosocial and vice-versa.
Read Moreinside the RID business meeting
by Steph • July 14th, 2005
If you didn’t attend the business meeting yesterday you missed:
covert communication typed into the meeting from the computer operator;
Mount Rushmore (four past RID Presidents);
regional and state rivalries;
a challenge to beat the Europeans in donations to WASLI, through RID’s “A Day’s Pay” program;
and customized (albiet unscripted) martini and fan service.
Perhaps other organizations have as much fun and intercollegiality as we do; but I’m not sure!
There was some drama concerning the now-delayed position paper (Standard Practice Paper) on Video Relay Interpreting and Video Relay Service.
nice things and hard ones
by Steph • December 16th, 2004
Yesterday was a mixed day. The highlight was a breakthrough for a mental health patient who’s treatment sessions I’ve been interpreting for over five years. WOW! The department party was enjoyable, but severely tainted by my memories of last year, when I was accompanied by my family. Alas.
Read MoreSUCKER!
by Steph • October 25th, 2004
Benjamin sucked me right into that trick question at his presentation today! Of course I *assumed* that if he was showing us a certain example it had to mean something. 🙂
A couple of the new cohorters got right in there – but what was up with all y’all marching in late and disrupting the whole show, eh?! And did anyone besides me notice the faculty member dozing off and on throughout?
overheard on the Metro
by Steph • October 2nd, 2004
“Teaching people how to create is the antidote to oppression.”
After I eavesdropped on a long conversation about knitting (!) I gave my card to these folk because I knew I was going to blog about them. 🙂
demand-control theory
by Steph • October 2nd, 2004
I attended part of Robyn’s workshop on observation supervision, and can see immediately why so many people have told me to check out her work. There are definitely many overlaps. 🙂
Demands are, simply, those tasks required of the job itself. Controls are the decisions one takes/makes to manage the delivery of these tasks.
Controls sound a lot like regulation in the Vygotskian sense (see previous post). Robyn described them as “decisions, actions, and attitudes – even recognizing a demand is a control” (not necessarily an exact quote, smile). There seems to be an implication that these controls are conscious? Since I don’t know the whole theory, I may be speculating way “out of turn” (surprise!), but it seems like putting the two approaches into dialogue with each other might be really productive. For instance, does demand-control theory itself recognize that some controls are unconscious (meaning habitual or reactive)?
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