Suchergebnisse

This paper discusses the role that sociological reflection can play in learning and improving knowledge in the field of mental health care. Two different positions within sociology will be discussed. The first one, taken from a constructionist perspective, interprets the role of sociology as a critical instance and highlights how the adoption of rigid formal protocols in psychiatry has hindered and endangered the autonomy and necessary discretion of clinicians at the moment of diagnosis. The second position, which takes an ethnomethodological point of view, holds instead that it is pointless to focus on formal protocols because concrete diagnostic practice consists of other procedures, not at all comparable to the official ones described by the DSM. For ethnomethodology, the contribution of sociology is not to add sociological knowledge to psychiatric knowledge, but to make the real resources and competences of clinical work explicit.

Televised formats such as talk shows and news interviews often include foreign guests whose participation requires the services of interpreters. Several studies have illustrated how, in media interpreting settings, interpreters are active participants in the interaction, rather than simply 'revoicing machines'. Most of these studies have concerned themselves with 'infotainment' shows, i.e. with a setting (usually) characterised by the physical presence of the interpreter, who becomes a ratified participant in the interaction. In this article, we wish instead to focus on the actions of interpreters in confrontational talk shows, i.e. media interpreting contexts characterised by the staged production of confrontation, where interpreting takes place off-camera in the simultaneous mode. Using examples from two Italian political talk shows featuring foreign guests, we show that also in this simultaneous interpreting context interpreters actively participate in conversational exchanges and are instrumental in the accomplishment of the confrontational practices which characterise such events.