Institutional multilingualism in settings of asylum and migration: a linguistic-ethnographic study of global English use in lingua franca and interpreter-mediated interaction at the Belgian asylum authorities

Description: The project aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of global English use in dialogic and triadic asylum interaction at the Belgian asylum agencies. It provides a linguistic-ethnographic analysis based on interview data (both authentic asylum interview data and semi-structured interviews with asylum applicants, officers and interpreters) gathered at different asylum agencies. Adopting an integrated approach to the participation structure of the asylum encounter (incorporating both dialogic and triadic interaction strategies and research perspectives), this study aims to contribute to both fundamental and applied research insights into global English use in migration encounters where English has no official status. The project will explore how such different practices of multilingualism pragmatically and indexically impact on the interaction between the participants and by extension how they affect the discursive construction of socio-legal identities in the asylum process.
Promoter(s): Katrijn Maryns
Researcher(s): Katrijn Maryns
Department / Research group: Department of Linguistics
Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy