The mental health interpreter’s relational agency and therapeutic alliance

ABSTRACT

A few studies suggest that, in interpreter-mediated mental health settings, the interpreter participates in the therapeutic alliance (TA) via relational agency within the triad. We have explored this hypothesis through the thematic analysis of 19 semi-structured interviews and the discursive analysis of three excerpts from an authentic interpreter-mediated French-Russian psychotherapeutic consultation using the conceptual tools of Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory enriched by Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1992) and taking into consideration discourse markers. The results of this descriptive and exploratory study show that the interpreter actively co-creates a supportive relationship in each of the three dyads, in particular through mitigation of Face-Threatening Acts and Face-Flattering Acts. In doing so, it may be that the interpreter co-constructs the affective dimension of a triadic TA that promotes the patient’s self-expression and underpins therapeutic work. A better understanding of the mechanisms of establishing and maintaining TA in interpreted mental health settings is crucial since research in monolingual contexts shows that the quality of TA is predictive of successful care.

KEYWORDS:

• Mental health interpreting
• relational agency
• therapeutic alliance
• semi-structured interviews
• politeness theory
• discourse markers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notation symbols (adapted from Jefferson 2004)

Table

Notes

1. The data presented here relate to the interpreter’s potential relational mediation. They have been extracted from larger corpora used to analyse other aspects of the mental health interpreter’s role as well (Delizée 2018).

2. e.g. deontology; interpreting skills and techniques, including managing of the interactional dynamics and the pragmatic dimension of cross-linguistic transfer; terminology and disciplinary knowledge, including mental health; intercultural and non-violent communication; discussion groups and seminars with service providers, etc.

3. For reasons of editorial space, only the most salient excerpts have been provided in their English translation to illustrate the results of the analysis. See more detail in Delizée (2018).

4. A non-rendition is a verbal production at the interpreter’s initiative that is not a translation of a prior original utterance (Wadensjö 1998, 108).

5. A ‘communicative trope’ refers to a situation where there is a discrepancy between the person to whom the speaker’s speech is addressed and the person to whom the speech is really intended (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1996, 35).

6. For an adaptation of positioning theory to public service interpreting and its application to discursive data as an analytical lens, see Delizée (2021).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anne Delizée

Anne Delizée is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Translation and Interpretation of Mons University. She holds a PhD on the interpreter’s role in mental health settings, while focusing on the interpreter’s cognitive processing. Her current research interests include research methodology and interpreting in health crisis situations.

Christine Michaux

Christine Michaux is Professor at the Faculty of Translation and Interpretation at Mons University. She holds a PhD in linguistics in the subfields of cognitive semantics and pragmatics. Her current research interests include cognition in translation and interpretation.