Constructing a Productive Other

Discourse theory and the Convention refugee hearing

Author

Robert F. Barsky | IGRC, Montreal, Canada

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027250414 (Eur) | EUR 110.00

ISBN 9781556192975 (USA) | USD 165.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027282835 | EUR 110.00 | USD 165.00

This book is a description of the process of constructing a productive Other for the purpose of being admitted to Canada as a Convention refugee. The whole claiming procedure is analyzed with respect to two actual cases, and contextualized by reference to pertinent national and international jurisprudence. Since legal analysis is deemed insufficient for a complete understanding of the argumentative and discursive strategies involved in the claiming and “authoring” processes, the author makes constant reference to methodologies from the realm of literary studies, discourse analysis and interaction theory, with special emphasis upon the works of Marc Angenot, M.M. Bakhtin, Pierre Bourdieu, Erving Goffman, Jürgen Habermas and Teun van Dijk. In so doing, he illustrates a reductive movement that inevitably occurs in legal argumentation which results in the displacement the subject from the realm of “refugee claimant” to that of claimant as “diminished Other.”

[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 29] 1994. x, 272 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.29

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements | p. 9

Introduction: The Construction of the Other | p. 1

The Chronotope for the Convention Refugee Hearing | p. 17

Interpreting and Transcribing the Other | p. 37

The Opening Section: The Discursive Paradigm | p. 65

The Middle Section: The Life Story | p. 117

The Closing Section: The un-Dialogic Other | p. 167

The Implicit and Explicit Criteria for Rendering the Decision: The Woman as Wtiness and the Appeal Case | p. 203

Conclusion: The Destruction of the Self | p. 241

Notes | p. 247

Cases Cited | p. 253

Index | p. 271

“The book improves our understanding both of the plight of refugee claimants and of the ways in which their fate is decided.”

Ian Mason, Heriot-Watt University

“This book tackles the more substantive relationships between the written legal code and the discourse practices of participants in refugee hearings.”

Denise Gandhi in Forensic Linguistics 3(2), 1996

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This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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