MA Intercultural and International Communication Theses
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Item Interpreter Agency Within the Economy of Language Services: Towards A New Paradigm for Community Interpreters(2024) Sasso, Angela; Ozolins, UldisThis study investigates the evolving landscape of community interpreting services in Canada, in the context of increasing demand and expanding diversity of languages. Despite this growth, interpreters face stagnant or declining compensation, market awareness, and professional standards. Community interpreters endure precarious job security, inadequate remuneration, and lack of recognition. This paradoxical situation, where the demand for services rises while the profession remains undervalued, forms the basis of the research. The central question of this study seeks to identify factors contributing to the lack of professional autonomy and self-governance among interpreters, despite the industry's expansion. Utilizing Bourdieu’s theory of social practice, the research explores the interplay between individual actions (agency) and structured social contexts (fields), focusing on the dynamic interaction between a professional's habitus, field structure, and various forms of capital. Grounded in participatory action research (PAR), the study employed semi-structured interviews with 16 actively working interpreters from the Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley regions. The findings reveal an occupational field characterized by isolation and lack of coordination among interpreters, allowing other agents to manipulate the field. Despite efforts to influence language service agencies, interpreters face constraints imposed by existing field structures and a lack of standardization. The study concludes that community interpreters face both tangible and symbolic challenges. It emphasizes the need to reconsider organizing structures for community interpreting, rather than adapting community interpreting to fit existing frameworks. This study contributes to the field by exploring the foundational causes that maintain the status quo, advocating for transformative change rooted in realism.Item I am Max : a story of self-advocacy and empowerment(2021-08-06) Morin, AnnieThe current social realities of transgender individuals create some opportunities to change the dominant narrative of exclusion by cultivating the relationship between empowerment and self-advocating. This biographic research, in the form of a documentary video using mediated public ethnography, centers on the story of Max, a genderfluid individual. The research was done in order to examine how Max as found their voice for change by gaining insights into their own personal experiences of empowerment and self-advocacy so that others can learn from it. It covers the main elements of empowerment, which I identify as process, context and power, as well as the building blocks of self-advocacy, which I identify as identity, rights and action. Based on the stories that Max has shared, I found that empowerment and advocacy were feeding each other in creating a circular process where empowerment is both a process and an outcome. The video can be found at: https://vimeo.com/265452346: RRU2018Item New In the Wheat City : a photovoice exploration of new residents’ relationship with community and place(2021-02-02) Miller, MeghanFor communities like Brandon, Manitoba, Canada, that are affected by shrinking birth rates and young Canadians flocking to urban centres, the city’s growth is directly linked to immigration, including the settlement, integration, and retention of new residents. The following study takes a holistic approach to analyzing new residents’ integration experience by concurrently utilizing the theoretical foundations of placemaking (highlighting new residents’ attachment to place) and sense of community (highlighting new residents’ attachment to the social community). Using a critical interpretivist approach and photovoice methodology, this study answers two research questions: How do new residents develop attachment to community and place? And subsequently, how can new residents’ attachment be enhanced from both the perspectives of new and long-term residents’ in order to promote multicultural community building? Thematic analysis of interview responses, photovoice, and community feedback has led to the conceptualization of a framework of multicultural community building recommendations. Keywords: photovoice, placemaking, sense of community, immigration, multicultural, community buildingItem Making Lemonade : examining female empowerment through visual music media(2020-09-30) Gass, Rebecca JoelleThis research study explores popular culture through visual music media, specifically Beyoncé’s 2016 visual album titled Lemonade. Through a social constructionist lens, a phenomenological approach, and by incorporating psychoanalytic film theory, critical theory, feminist theory, and Black feminist theory, this study aims to uncover what aspects of visual music media empower youth girls aged 15-19 years. Through film-elicited interviews and digital focus groups, this study engaged with 11 youth girls from across Canada about what makes and does not make them feel empowered while viewing music videos. Qualitative thematic analysis was used to produce results which included three sensitizing concepts named cloak of competence, cloak of incompetence and generational language along with five emerging themes, listed as voice, unity, persistence, compassion and relatability Thematic results outlined visual, auditory, and metaphorical phenomena that empower and disempower youth girls. Empowering aspects to visual music media included visual depictions of voice, unity, auditory depictions of compassion and persistence, and a sense of relatability between the artist, situation, emotion, or setting.Item “Why won’t they mix?”: barriers to Indigenous/non-Indigenous youth relationships in Yukon high schools(2020-01-10) Fabre-Dimsdale, AnyesThe Yukon territory is home to fourteen First Nations, eleven of them self-governing. Close to 25% percent of the Yukon’s population is Indigenous. In the 5 high schools of the Yukon’s capital city of Whitehorse however, interactions and relationships between the indigenous and non-indigenous students are often perceived as minimal and uneasy, as observed by parents, staff, and the students themselves, with social groups often divided between indigenous and non-indigenous youth. Using a non-traditional narrative approach focusing on the lived experiences of students, parents and staff, this paper seeks to examine and identify possible barriers to relationships between indigenous and non-indigenous youth in the schools, while collecting from project participants recommendations to better foster relationship building and connection between students, in support of a more welcoming, inclusive and culturally relevant high school community for Indigenous youth.