Abstract
Abstract This article concerns knowledge negotiations as an aspect of interactional power in three-way interaction between Arabic-speaking women, Swedish-speaking midwives and interpreters in Swedish antenatal care. The notion of epistemic stance is used to investigate how all three participants negotiate knowledge, and how this affects the ongoing consultation. The data consist of audio recordings of 33 consultations, involving five midwives. Using an interaction analytical approach, the study focuses on sequences where the pregnant woman makes her voice heard, possibly challenging the midwife or the Swedish antenatal care programme. Three different ways in which the epistemic stances of the participants unfold interactionally are analysed: (1) the midwife and the pregnant woman mutually adjusting their knowledge claims, (2) the pregnant woman unsuccessfully attempting to claim knowledge and (3) participants jointly asserting the midwife’s knowledge. Importantly, all three participants wield their interactional power through various ways of negotiating knowledge, which contrasts with the idea of the interpreter as fully neutral and detached. The knowledge claims of the pregnant women and the midwives in the data are also shown to be highly dependent on the interpreters’ competence and performance.
Highlights
This article deals with the negotiation of knowledge in multilingual settings involving an interpreter
All three participants wield their interactional power through various ways of negotiating knowledge, which contrasts with the idea of the interpreter as fully neutral and detached
Interpreters may subtly or more forcefully influence such asymmetries (Angelelli 2004; Mason and Ren 2012), and miscommunication may increase the risk of medical problems during pregnancy and childbirth (Esscher et al 2014).The multilingual and cross-cultural settings of interpreter-mediated encounters mean that participants – in our case midwives, pregnant women and interpreters – have to navigate complex aspects of information exchange, relationship formations and so on
Summary
This article deals with the negotiation of knowledge in multilingual settings involving an interpreter. Midwives, Arabic-speaking pregnant women and bilingual interpreters claim, challenge and formulate knowledge as part of antenatal care consultations. We see such knowledge negotiations as an aspect of power in interaction. Interpreters may subtly or more forcefully influence such asymmetries (Angelelli 2004; Mason and Ren 2012), and miscommunication may increase the risk of medical problems during pregnancy and childbirth (Esscher et al 2014).The multilingual and cross-cultural settings of interpreter-mediated encounters mean that participants – in our case midwives, pregnant women and interpreters – have to navigate complex aspects of information exchange, relationship formations and so on (cf Angelelli 2004; Penn and Watermeyer 2018), all of which pertain to knowledge and power in various ways. In order to tease out the interactional and contextual conditions of the antenatal care consultations in our study, this section reviews previous studies on power and knowledge in medical settings, the role of the interpreter in interaction and factors influencing interpretation
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