Triadic Exchanges

Dialogue interpreting is a generic term covering a diverse range of fields of interpreting which have in common the basic feature of face-to-face interaction between three parties: the interpreter and (at least) two other speakers. The interaction consists of spontaneous dialogue, involving relatively short turns at talk, in two languages. It is usually goal-directed in the sense that there is some outcome to be negotiated. The studies in this volume cover several different fields: courtroom interpreting, doctor-patient interviews, immigration interviews, etc., and involve a range of different languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, More and Austrian Sign Language. They have in common that they view the interpreter as just one of the parties to this three-way exchange, in which each participant's moves can affect each other participant and thus the outcome of the event. In Part I, new research directions are explored in studies which piece together evidence of the ways dialogue interpreters actually behave and the effects of their behaviour. This is followed by two studies which discuss traditional interpreter roles - the 'King's Linguist' in Burkina Faso and the Oranda Tsûji, official interpreters employed in isolationist eighteenth-century Japan to ensure contact with the outside world. Finally, issues involved in training are the subject of two chapters relating to Austria and the UK. The variety of aspects and approaches represented in the volume - linguistic, cultural, pragmatic, historical - offer a rich and fascinating overview of the field of dialogue interpreting studies as it now stands.

Innovative in its approach, Rethinking Public Choice reviews the concept of public choice since the 1950s post-war period and the application of economics to political practices and institutions, as well as its evolution in recent years attracting contributions from political science and philosophy.

This volume – the first-ever collection of research on healthcare interpreting – centers on three interrelated themes: cross-cultural communication in healthcare settings, the interactional role of persons serving as interpreters and the discourse patterns of interpreter-mediated interaction. The individual chapters, by seven innovative researchers in the area of community-based interpreting, represent a pioneering attempt to look beyond stereotypical perceptions of interpreter-mediated interactions. First published as a Special Issue of Interpreting 7:2 (2005), this volume offers insights into the impact of the interpreter – whether s/he is a trained professional or a member of the patient's family – including ways in which s/he may either facilitate or impair reliable communication between patient and healthcare provider. The five articles cover a range of settings and specialties, from general medicine to pediatrics, psychiatry and speech therapy, using languages as diverse as Arabic, Dari, Farsi, Italian and Spanish in combination with Danish, Dutch, English and French.

‘This book is a thoroughly researched and well written exploration of one of the most divisive topics in modern democratic discourse. Novak brings careful and clear thinking to a topic too often clouded in emotion and guided by moral intuition. ‘ —Peter Boettke, Professor of Economics and Philosophy, George Mason University, USA ‘Inequality has bred a climate of hostile political discourse reminiscent of the cold war. In this lucid book, Novak explains how we can transcend that hostility by recognizing the deeply entangled character of politics and economics within modern societies.’ —Richard E. Wagner, Hobart R. Harris Professor of Economics, George Mason University, USA ‘Mikayla Novak has provided a bold new intellectual foundation for social policy analysis.’ —Jason Potts, Professor of Economics, RMIT University, Australia In recent years the degree of income and wealth inequality within developed countries has been raised as a central issue in economic and social policy debates. Numerous figures across diverse ideological affinities have advocated policy measures to significantly alter income and wealth distributions, while the inequality debate has become infused with other subjects such as social justice and identity politics. This book presents an account of economic inequality from a contemporary classical liberal perspective. Inequality is seen as a by-product of entangled relationships within society, bringing to the fore key ideas from complexity, evolutionary and network sciences. Novak illustrates that inequality is problematic insofar as it generates pro-rich redistribution and constrains progress by the less well off. Economic inequality has important links with issues such as fiscal and regulatory policies, discrimination and social exclusion, and institutional design. This unique book is important reading for social science academics, policy makers and people interested in exploring the dimensions and solutions to inequality, a critical issue of our time.

James M. Buchanan and Liberal Political Economy: A Rational Reconstruction examines the contemporary meaning and significance of James M. Buchanan’s body of work. The book uses Buchanan’s past contributions to explore the present and future relevance of his scholarly contributions and insights. It seeks mainly to explain what insight for their work contemporary scholars might acquire by becoming familiar with some of Buchanan’s formulations. Buchanan was one of the most creative and prolific scholars of political economy during the post-war period. Not only was his body of work so immense that it could not be contained within 20 volumes of Collected Works, but also Buchanan’s scholarship made such strong contact with law, ethics, and political science that he could easily have served as a poster-child for the programs in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics which have been gaining momentum in recent years. Buchanan spoke for a style of economics that made wide and firm contact with the full range of the humane studies. This book emphasizes those features of Buchanan’s thought that seem relevant for contemporary scholarship within the broadly liberal tradition of political economy.

The aim of this book is to bring together social scientists, cognitive scientists, psychologists, neuroscientists, neuropsychologists and others to promote a dialogue about the variety of processes involved in social cognition, as well as the relevance of mirroring neural systems to those processes. Social cognition is a broad discipline that encompasses many issues not yet adequately addressed by neurobiologists. Yet, it is a strong belief that framing these issues in terms of the neural basis of social cognition, especially within an evolutionary perspective, can be a very fruitful strategy. This book includes some of the leading thinkers in the nascent field of mirroring processes and reflects the authors’ attempts to till common ground from a variety of perspectives. The book raises contrary views and addresses some of the most vexing yet core questions in the field – providing the basis for extended discussion among interested readers and laying down guidelines for future research. It has been argued that interaction with members of one’s own social group enhances cognitive development in primates and especially humans (Barrett & Henzi, 2005). Byrne and Whiten (1988), Donald (1991), and others have speculated that abilities such as cooperation, deception, and imitation led to increasingly complex social interactions among primates resulting in a tremendous expansion of the cerebral cortex. The evolutionary significance of an imitation capability in primates is matched by its ontological consequences.

Infants' Sense of People focusses on infants during their first year of life, exploring how they begin to think about other people, their feelings, emotions and intentions, and how they become aware of these aspects of their own development. Drawing on a broad range of research and developmental theory, Maria Legerstee takes the view that infants have an innate sense of people at birth, which is activated through sympathetic emotions. She questions the idea that infants use physical parameters such as contingencies or motion to distinguish people from objects, and rejects the assumption that infants are mechanical creatures before they become psychological ones. She argues persuasively that before infants learn to speak, interactions with others are possible because infants have a primitive pre-linguistic 'theory of mind'. This accessible book provides a valuable synthesis of current thinking on early social and cognitive development and the origins of theory of mind.