The ventriloquization of written records in professional and judicial discourse from Belgium and Argentina

CARRANZA, ISOLDA E.

Sevilla

Congreso; 8th International Symposium on Intercultural, Cognitive and Social Pragmatics (EPICS VIII); 2018

Universidad de Sevilla

In this presentation, we discuss two types of interactions (viz. professional and judicial) from two different cultural contexts (viz. Belgium and Argentina). In particular, we use Argentinian courtroom data and Belgian data from performance appraisal interviews in a medical organization. Both types can be characterized as interactions among participants with asymmetrical statuses. In these interactions, we analyze three cases in which subordinates' oral claims are refuted by superiors who draw on written documents of which the subordinates are the (in)direct authors. In this ventriloquization process (Cooren 2012), the superiors construct these written documents as facts, which have institutionalized the evidential status of the claims. The comparison between the two types of interactions in our dataset revealed that the Belgian performance appraisal interviews allowed for a more flexible handling of written documents, while the Argentinian courtroom case displayed a much more rigid structure in which the 'incorporation' of written records immediately entailed a number of interactionally non-negotiable implications. On the basis of these findings, we argue that the difference between these two types of interactions plays a decisive role in this, as these present very different activity types (Levinson 1992) with crucial differences in allowable contributions on the part of the speakers. Yet, overall, it became clear that in both very diverse datasets, an organization's norms are invoked through the use of official records, and the organization is constituted in concrete instances of the application of norms by the individual superior's discretion in ratifying the value of a record and adhering to its version of the past. And even though the various contexts and types of interactions thus differ in the degree in which superiors have leeway either to impose or flexibly override the factuality of certain records, it has become clear that by making records matter for the development of the interaction, superiors subject subordinate participants to their authority. In conclusion, we argue that they do this by drawing on the different ontological status of written records, as such constituting the organization in the name of which they are acting and which reflexively entitles them to act in this way.