Complex Communication Situations Research Articles

(e)Health literacy brokering: bridging sociolinguistic gaps at the welfare office?

Abstract This comparative case study illuminates communicative strategies arising in contact between two migrant clients, ‘Maria’ and ‘Suda’, and their caseworker at the Norwegian welfare office. Suda and Maria mobilize bureaucratic, digital, and linguistic abilities as part of their health literacies to manage in-person contact, institutional websites, letters, and digital bureaucracy. Additionally, they collaborate with their Norwegian spouses to navigate the complex communicative situation at the welfare office and actively bring up this brokering strategy to increase their social and linguistic authority vis-à-vis their caseworkers. Combining Bourdieusian symbolic power with epistemic stance, and drawing on observations and interviews, I investigate how power and responsibility are negotiated between the women and their caseworkers. In their interactions, brokering strategies function as social capital in several ways, enabling the women to access institutional services, and reassuring their caseworkers that the women have sufficient literacy resources to gain access. I discuss the dual nature of brokering strategies as capital, but also as a factor that may reproduce structural vulnerability, and argue for better understanding of brokering as a health literacy strategy.

ФОРМУВАННЯ КОНФЛІКТОЛОГІЧНОЇ КОМПЕТЕНТНОСТІ ПЕРСОНАЛУ ДКВС УКРАЇНИ В РОБОТІ ІЗ ЗАСУДЖЕНИМИ

This article examines the issue of the role of conflicts in determining the criminal behavior of convicts and persons taken into custody and the conflict-related formation competence of the personnel of the penitentiary institutions and detention centers. The purpose of the article is the “conflictological competence” skills by using training technologies and exercises which will allow to form the necessary skills of the penitentiary institutions personnel for the execution of punishments. Conclusions. Because it is not always possible to detect conflicts in time in penitentiary institutions, which is explained by their hidden nature. In addition, there are conflicts in the penitentiary institutions, which are caused by personal characteristics and leadership style of the correctional facilities personnel. The style of management of penitentiary institutions is connected with personal characteristics, temperament, lack of experience and professional personality deformation. Indicative program for training conflict-related competence of the penitentiary institutions personnel in four sessions, the purpose of which is to create the atmosphere of openness; trust and support of group cohesion of group participants; mastering the methods of conflict analysis and searching for regularities of adaptive behavior in difficult communication situations; building professional skills of active listening, understanding of another person in complex communication situations, learning effective methods of self-regulation of behavior and decrease emotional states in the conflict. Key words: conflict, conflict competence, the personnel of the State Criminal and Executive Service of Ukraine, prevention of conflicts, training of conflict-related competence.

Measuring Verbal Reasoning and Executive Strategies in German Speaking People with Cognitive-Communication Disorders: Cross-Cultural Adaptation and Pilot Testing of the FAVRES-DE

ABSTRACT Background Cognitive communication disorders (CCDs) are a hallmark of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Difficulties may be relatively subtle, becoming especially evident in complex communication situations which place a higher cognitive demand on the person affected. To date, no standardised, ecologically valid assessment tool for detecting these subtle CCDs exists for German. The Functional Assessment of Verbal Reasoning and Executive Strategies (FAVRES; (MacDonald, 2005)), available in English and Canadian-French, is designed to detect subtle CCDs after acquired brain-injury (ABI) using real-life scenarios. Aims This study aims to translate and adapt the FAVRES into German as well as to gather reference data on the performance of neurologically healthy adults. Furthermore, the study conducts a first evaluation of age- and education-specific performance trends and interrater-reliability. Results are compared with the normative data of the original English version and the French-Canadian translation. In addition, an exploratory multiple case analysis of the feasibility of the FAVRES-DE and its capability to detect subtle CCDs on a sample of four adults with TBI is conducted. Methods & Procedures The original version of the FAVRES was translated and adapted based on the ITC-Guidelines for Translating and Adapting Tests (2016). The resulting German version, the FAVRES-DE, was completed by 60 neurologically healthy adults (32 women) and four adults with chronic CCD after TBI (≥ 6 months post onset) in a pilot cross-sectional study. Results The FAVRES-DE was feasible with all participants. Age and education had significant influence on the performance of the neurologically healthy group, whose results were comparable to the original version and to the French-Canadian normative study, but analyses revealed differences in several subscores. Two of the four participants with TBI exhibited a significantly lower performance than the control group. Analyses of interrater-reliability revealed a high level of agreement between three independent raters. Discussion The FAVRES-DE seems to be a sensitive measure to identify CCDs after TBI. The challenges of detecting subtle CCDs are exemplified by one of the TBI cases. Further validation and psychometric testing of the FAVRES-DE on a representative dataset is warranted.

Evidence-gathering in police interviews

Abstract In this paper I discuss the many complexities that police officers have to deal with in their communication with suspects. Investigative interviewing is a very complex communicative situation in itself, with a number of different psychological and sociological variables at play during each interview. In addition, suspect interviews bring about an additional dimension of complexity, which is driven by the fact that a basic principle of conversation, cooperation (Grice 1975) is often not respected and is sometimes severely and purposefully violated, for example when suspects are guilty and want to obscure that very fact or when they believe that their situation would worsen if they cooperated with the police. A further layer of complexity is added when the interviews are carried out via an interpreter, where the fact that the officer and the suspect speak different languages during the interview creates additional barriers to straightforward communication. In the present paper, I identify a number of points at which communication difficulties are encountered in this highly sensitive legal context. For this purpose, I analyse authentic interview datasets provided by two UK police constabularies, and also make comparisons with examples from transcripts of authentic US police interrogations. In addition, I highlight the issues that arise when professional interpretation is not available and when bilingual police officers assume the dual role of investigator-interpreter. Finally, I suggest possible solutions that can help remove the hurdles standing in the way of efficient and accurate gathering of communication evidence.

(The Effect of Standardization in Personal and Telephone Interviews)

Russian Abstract: В ходе телефонных опросов часто возникают отходы от стандартизации. Одной из причин этого является то, что респондент недопонимает вопрос или оказывается в ситуации сложного соответствия, когда он не может дать однозначный ответ на поставленный перед ним вопрос. Отходы от стандартизации проявляются в различных формах, однако, с точки зрения дальнейшей методологической работы, наибольший интерес представляет объяснение или описание респондентом обстоятельств, в которых он находится или находился раньше, вместо прямого ответа. Эти развернутые, не стандартизированные ответы можно назвать параданными в том смысле, что они предоставляют нам информацию о том, как респондент отвечает на вопрос, к каким аргументам прибегает, с какими сложностями он сталкивается. Поскольку речь идет о сложных соответствиях, при которых в основном и возникают отходы от стандартизации, эта новая, дополнительная информация может быть полезна для изменения операционализации понятий и дальнейшей работы с инструментарием. Существует два способа работы с поломкой хода опроса в зависимости от того, какую задачу ставит перед собой интервьюер. В рамках стандартизированной парадигмы он должен в принципе избегать отхода от стандартизации и, соответственно, появления параданных, поскольку в момент сложной коммуникативной ситуации повышается вероятность его влияния на ответы респондента. Поэтому необходимо минимизировать участие интервьюера в поиске ответа и максимизировать интерпретацию вопроса респондентом. Более гибкий опрос видит перед собой основную задачу в том, чтобы довести до респондента тот смысл вопроса, который был заложен при проектировании обследования, и получить релевантный ответ. Поэтому он позволяет собеседникам обмениваться уточняющими вопросами и пояснениями. В процессе подобного взаимодействия и возникают отходы от стандартизации, влекущие за собой массив дополнительной информации. Если придерживаться второго подхода, то поиск ответа на вопрос в интервью оказывается сложным процессом, в который вовлечены оба участника разговора. Их взаимодействие направлено на прояснение смысла, без которого полученные ответы не могут представлять никакой ценности. English Abstract: In the course of telephone interviews, interviewers often have to break existing standards. One of the reasons for this is that the respondent does not understand the question or is in a situation of complex correspondence, when he or she can not give an unambiguous answer. This violation of the standards is manifested in various forms. However, from the point of view of further methodological work, the most interesting example is the explanation or description by the respondent of the circumstances in which he is or was earlier, instead of a direct answer. These detailed, non-standardized answers can be called paradigms in the sense that they provide us with information about how the respondent answers the question of which arguments he uses, what difficulties he encounters. Since we are talking about complex correspondences, in which, basically, violation of interview standards arise, this new additional information can be useful for changing the operationalization of concepts and further working with the toolkit. There are two ways to work with the breakdown of the survey, depending on what task the interviewer poses. In the framework of a standardized paradigm, it should in principle avoid departing from standardization and, correspondingly, the appearance of paradata, because at the time of a complex communicative situation, the probability of its influence on respondents' responses increases. Therefore, it is necessary to minimize the interviewer's participation in the search for the answer and maximize the interpretation of the question by the respondent. A more flexible survey sees the main task in bringing to the respondent the meaning of the question that was laid during the design of the survey and to receive a relevant answer. Therefore, it allows interlocutors to exchange clarifying questions and explanations. In the process of such interaction, there arise waste from standardization, which entail an array of additional information. If we adhere to the second approach, then the search for an answer to a question in an interview is a complex process involving both participants in the conversation. Their interaction is aimed at clarifying the meaning, without which the answers received can not be of any value.

Neural alpha dynamics in younger and older listeners reflect acoustic challenges and predictive benefits.

Speech comprehension in multitalker situations is a notorious real-life challenge, particularly for older listeners. Younger listeners exploit stimulus-inherent acoustic detail, but are they also actively predicting upcoming information? And further, how do older listeners deal with acoustic and predictive information? To understand the neural dynamics of listening difficulties and according listening strategies, we contrasted neural responses in the alpha-band (∼10 Hz) in younger (20-30 years, n = 18) and healthy older (60-70 years, n = 20) participants under changing task demands in a two-talker paradigm. Electroencephalograms were recorded while humans listened to two spoken digits against a distracting talker and decided whether the second digit was smaller or larger. Acoustic detail (temporal fine structure) and predictiveness (the degree to which the first digit predicted the second) varied orthogonally. Alpha power at widespread scalp sites decreased with increasing acoustic detail (during target digit presentation) but also with increasing predictiveness (in-between target digits). For older compared with younger listeners, acoustic detail had a stronger impact on task performance and alpha power modulation. This suggests that alpha dynamics plays an important role in the changes in listening behavior that occur with age. Last, alpha power variations resulting from stimulus manipulations (of acoustic detail and predictiveness) as well as task-independent overall alpha power were related to subjective listening effort. The present data show that alpha dynamics is a promising neural marker of individual difficulties as well as age-related changes in sensation, perception, and comprehension in complex communication situations.

Assessment of Cognitive Load, Speech Communication Quality and Quality of Experience for spatial and non-spatial audio conferencing calls

The operational characteristics and thus the quality of audio conferencing systems are affected by scalability issues in terms of the number of participants and communication devices, which can change between or even during calls. Towards the development of methods that can handle such scalability aspects, this work investigates the effect of changes in the communicative situation (i.e. Communication Complexity) and the system properties (i.e. Technical System Capability) on the user’s quality perception. In a listening-only test, subjects evaluated for a set of artificial telephone conferences their impression of the perceived system performance (i.e. Speech Communication Quality), the perceived effort to follow the conversation (i.e. Cognitive Load), and the overall experience as such (i.e. Quality of Experience). The results showed that not only a technically more advanced system, but also a less complex communicative situation can improve quality perception. Consequently, the assessment of audio conferencing systems needs to incorporate the special communicative situation of such multiparty settings: the methods should avoid confusions between Speech Communication Quality and Quality of Experience; perceptual studies should control for or report on the Communication Complexity to facilitate comparability of studies; and instrumental approaches should incorporate an estimation of the Communication Complexity to improve performance.

Ethics in the Teaching of Conference Interpreting

In marked contrast to research on court and community interpreting, in which ethics has long been addressed, research on conference interpreting has tended to focus on cognitive aspects of the interpreting process. In addition, ethical issues have not usually been addressed explicitly in the classroom. Recently, however, a shift in emphasis in both research and training can be observed, with closer attention being paid to the role of the conference interpreter within a complex communicative situation. Many training programmes now incorporate explicit modules on ethics. Thus, in many ways conference interpreting has seen a shift towards considerations previously more typical of community and court interpreting. This paper examines the reasons for this shift and for persistent attempts to draw distinctions between the various types of interpreting in relation to ethical demands. The consequences of professional self-perception and socialization for the place of ethics in conference interpreter training are also discussed.

Reconstructing the pragmatics of a medieval marriage negotiation (Novgorod 955)

This article presents a pragmaphilological approach to the analysis of a recently discovered Novgorodian birchbark letter (N955) written in the course of matchmaking. This document has an unusual format and includes ornamentation generally associated with parchment manuscripts. My chief goal is to reconstruct the complex communicative situation and social functions that it reflects. To be properly understood, the text, format, and ornamentation should be treated holistically, as functionally interrelated elements. I show that the visually and textually discrete sections of the letter pertain to different addressees or to addressees with changing social roles in the communicative event. Finally, in an excursus, I offer an interpretation of two words that differs from the one in the published edition.

Powers of Utterance: A Discourse Approach to Works of Lorca, Machado, and Valle-Inclan (review)

Reviewed by: Powers of Utterance: A Discourse Approach to Works of Lorca, Machado, and Valle-Inclán Dougherty Dru Warner, Robin . Powers of Utterance: A Discourse Approach to Works of Lorca, Machado, and Valle-Inclán. Bristol: HiPLAM, 2003. 197 pages. A fresh wind has blown in from Bristol. Students and scholars will gain many new insights into the works of García Lorca, Antonio Machado and Valle-Inclán thanks to Robin Warner's innovative study. Just as important, they will garner basic principles of discourse-pragmatics approaches to literary texts, a discipline [End Page 381] based in linguistics that offers the literary critic new methods to "account for the complexities of the way formal and contextual features interact in the reception and interpretation of literary texts" (183). The first section of Warner's book is devoted to explaining how discourse studies foreground the communicative situation within which literary texts are embedded, and to analyzing the strategies writers use to dialogue with their readers and audiences. The method assumes that specific lexical and morpho-syntactical features (adjectives, adverbs, parallel syntactical structures, exclamations, etc.) are chosen by authors to produce effects that, when read or heard in a communication event, presuppose shared background information and cultural values by all concerned. Meaning is thus "collaboratively created and negotiated rather than simply produced and received" (184). The formal choices of writers are therefore laden with communicative intent that engages readers and, through them, the socio-political matrix shared by both agents. Warner illustrates her method by means of an acute analysis of Pablo Neruda's well-known poem "Explico algunas cosas." The poet's words are viewed as utterances within a "situation of performance" (23) that implicates the reader in an ethical "here and now"—the Spanish civil war at the time. The principles thus demonstrated are then applied to theatrical dialogue, a more complex communicative situation in which a life-like conversation (between fictional characters) is embedded in an implicit exchange between author and audience. Warner's examination of Valle-Inclán's ¿Para cuándo son las reclamaciones diplomáticas? draws out the play's dramatic irony, one of the main strategies used in the esperpentos to signal the author's skeptical attitude toward his characters' utterances, an invitation that his audience will presumably recognize and accept. One salient virtue of this analysis is its clarification of the function of Valle's famous stage directions: they become points of complicity in which the reader is asked to share the author's detached perspective and thus view his characters within an ironic frame. The following two chapters take up specific works written by Antonio Machado and García Lorca, in which the authors establish "a situation of address" and sustain "a communicative relationship with the reader" (60) by means of carefully crafted linguistic features. The happy choice of Machado's "El hospicio" allows us to discern how the poem's adjectives have an "important communicative or intersubjective role" (68), while its metaphors resonate "with broader socio-historical connotations" (78), i.e., Spain's blindness to the bankruptcy of its traditional institutions. The analysis of "A José María Palacio" is a brilliant reading of one of Machado's most successful poems, which, of course, generates the communicative situation by means of the discursive convention of the poetic letter. The function of questions in poetry is examined, and Warner underscores how in this poem [End Page 382] they request overall "confirmation of shared beliefs and opinions" originating in the poet's "emotional de-centredness" (97). Machado's proverbs and axioms are in turn framed as essentially heteroglossic poems that stage tensions between dissenting voices—an apt entry into their irony and ambiguity. The ambivalent engagement with Spanish tradition by Machado and García Lorca comes to the fore in the former's "Los olivos" and the latter's Romancero gitano. But more original is Warner's discussion of contrasting deployments of nineteenth-century melodramatic discourse by Valle-Inclán and García Lorca. Lorca and melodrama? Yes, in Bodas de sangre, melodramatic commonplaces are "refined" to evoke "urgently physical attraction rather than romantic sentiments," whereas in Los cuernos de Friolera, whose eleventh...

Rhetoric by design: Using web development projects in the technical communication classroom

Technical communication instructors increasingly see the importance of the World Wide Web as a research tool; however, many are uncertain about how to make Web development projects pedagogically valuable. I argue that such projects can play a critical role in establishing a rhetorical focus in technical communication classrooms. The Web development process helps students form a more concrete understanding of the rhetorical situation and its pertinence to technical documents. Moreover, an extended term project requiring student groups to create technical print documents in the course of developing a Web site provides a useful way to foster objectives for students' communicative efforts and, thereby, encourage rhetorical practices suited to the complex communication situations students will experience in the workplace.

Knowledge systems and public health

The knowledge and information systems (KIS) perspective arose from reflections on agricultural development. In the health sector, it is not quite as common to think in terms of KIS. Yet in this complex field, in which health education and promotion play increasingly important roles, the KIS perspective might be very useful. In this article, the authors attempt to apply ideas about KIS and knowledge management to health, by paying attention to the historical development, especially of public health, and by exploring the contribution these ideas could make to the field. Some of the observations made in this attempt are: upstream information flows often are developed poorly, interaction and exchange among the different KIS parties require ongoing stimulation, in special projects and complex communication situations, a system-integrator is needed.