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Linguistics in the world
1. Interview with a policeman
Read the following interview that we carried out with a serving police officer in southern England. In small groups, discuss and design a training package that would help raise language awareness among police officers.
Have you encountered any problems at work that you think may have something to do with language?
I have been a police officer for 22 years and have spent the majority of my service at Slough. This town is reputed to be the most ethnically diverse area in Britain outside London. With this comes a significant number of people for whom English is not spoken or is not spoken very well. Like the other public services, any barrier to communication impacts on the effectiveness of the service provided. Put this into an emergency service scenario where accurate information is needed quickly and the management and decision making is adversely affected.
Slow time enquiries and situations are easier to manage as we are provided with work phones. These can be used to contact Language Line, a call centre-based service that will quickly put you in touch with an interpreter. This service is used daily by many officers, particularly those working in the custody environment in order to properly risk assess detainees, give rights and entitlements etc. Language Line is also used to book interpreters to attend the police station to interpret during interviews with suspects, to take written statements from witnesses and to translate in court. The Language Line service has become as much part of our ‘toolkit’ as a pen! This service doesn’t come cheaply, but this cost (in my opinion) has to be offset against the additional burden placed on the criminal justice system by not getting it right first time, the overtime incurred by officers locating their own interpreters, as we used to have to do, and the ability to better manage risk to both suspects and victims.
Can you think of any language-related incidents at work that have surprised you, upset you, puzzled you? What happened? How did you deal with it?
I can’t say I’ve ever been surprised as this is a situation I have grown up with during my service. I find those we come into contact with who have a selective approach to how much English they speak/understand ever more trying. Tell someone they are under arrest and they can’t speak English. Tell the same person they are no longer under arrest and they will probably understand and respond in English.
I once interviewed a suspect who didn’t speak English. I arranged for an interpreter to be present during the interview and the suspect had also elected to have a solicitor present. As it happened the solicitor also spoke the same language as the suspect and was able to understand his answers without translation. A situation arose where the solicitor disputed the translation that was provided by the interpreter. It was (apparently) an issue of dialect rather than the basic language and of course I was none the wiser either way. There were other issues with this case that meant the suspect wasn’t charged with any offence, however had it ended up in court, I would have had to raise this as an element that could undermine the case.
Was there anything in your training that helped you make sense of these problems/incidents?
Nothing in my training and I don’t know the specifics of the current training package for new recruits.
From your day to day working experience are there any language issues that have arisen that you would be interested to learn more about?
It doesn’t come up too frequently, but dealing with deaf people presents a different kind of language problem as it can’t be resolved by an interpreter over the phone. I would be interested in learning more about the protocol or etiquette involved when dealing with those from this group.
What sort of language-related training do you think might be helpful for you or others in your profession?
Many of my colleagues will learn or pick up basic phrases in Polish, Urdu, Punjabi. We also have many colleagues for whom these are first languages. A situation I see often when younger officers are interviewing a person with an interpreter present is that they are drawn toward the interpreter and begin to direct their questions at them rather than the interviewee. This undermines the officer and looks poor.
2. International English
Read this written extract from a Nigerian scholar of language:
As more and more people learn English in Nigeria, so will the international intelligibility of Nigerian spoken English fall. This is nothing to worry about since the role of English in Nigeria is largely in internal communication and the few business men, officials, diplomats and students who have to communicate with people abroad in more cosmopolitan English can be trusted to learn to make the same necessary adjustments that a university professor from Chicago must learn to converse with a miner from Rotherham (Jibril 1980: 98).
This was 1980 – do you think Jibril’s assessment still stands, or have attitudes to English changed? Hint: do some internet research on English as a Lingua Franca before you consider the question.
3. The scope of linguistics as a subject of study
Read these extracts cited in Andrews, L. (2006), Language Exploration and Awareness: A Resource Book for Teachers. London: Routledge, p. 33.
‘The focus of American linguistics, I found, with few exceptions was almost exclusively on some aspect of phonetics, phonology, or syntax, with almost active indifference toward meaning and a near defiant obliviousness to the world of experience’. (Oller)
Although recent research ‘has moved beyond the acquisition of grammatical competence, performance – the messy business of actual language use – is not accorded much attention’. (Clarke)
Comment on the view of linguistics as a subject of study which is suggested by each of these extracts.
4. Have a look at this picture of a cracker packaging and consider why we thought it interesting enough to photograph. Do you think the different scripts say the same thing? Where do you think we came across the package? Where do you think it was made? What other examples of global product design can you think of?
