1.1 Introduction: An Ethnographic and Narrative Approach to Professional Training This book is concerned with the concept of ‘professional identity’, not the identity of practising professionals but rather how professional identities emerge through professional training in institutions of higher education (HE). It seeks to explore how these institutions attempt to construct the characterising attributes, skills and the social role of a professional figure for students, and how students in turn interpret these constructs to develop their own sense of self and place in the social world. The book presents research into one specific, nationally renowned HE institution in Italy, dedicated to the professional training of interpreters and translators.1 Although it is only one institution (and therefore arguably limited in terms of its generalizability) it is nevertheless internationally accredited, being a member of the ‘Conference Internationale d’Instituts Universitaires de Traducteurs et Interprètes’ (CIUTI),2 whose members follow strict and shared guidelines with regard to cur ricula, infrastructure and resources. Other members of this association include the following universities worldwide: The University of Vienna in Austria; the University of Antwerp in Belgium; Heidelberg University in Germany; the University of Warsaw in Poland; the University of Montreal in Canada and Heriot-Watt University in the UK, to name a few. Furthermore, the work presented here also looks at how other institutions and B.A. degree programs from around the globe frame interpreter studies through their published curricula and course prospectuses (see Chap. 12), comparing and con trasting these with Italy. This serves in part as an initial overview of the different ways in which institutions frame interpreter studies, and also serves as an invitation for more studies into these other communities to be carried out. Studies, such as the one I present here, which examine how students construct their professional identities as they interact and negotiate curricula and teaching practices in a HE institution. The research itself is based on a year-long case study involving a group of first-year B.A. students as they navigated their initial experiences in tertiary edu cation, taking their first steps towards their chosen profession. It took an ethno graphic approach (see Chap. 5), by carrying out a series of semi-structured individual and group interviews over the first academic year, as well as by making detailed observations in the field over the same period. Ethnographic approaches are not favoured by the whole academic establishment and critics often argue that it is based on too few samples and is therefore not generalizable in a wider, more meaningful, ‘scientific’ way. However, broader research approaches (i.e. survey research) often mean sacrificing depth for breadth, with the risk of missing key information. Immersing oneself in a particular community for a significant period of time, with the aim of obtaining emic insights into that community’s practices and semiotic resources, can uncover data that broader research might well miss (Hammersley 1992). Moreover, an ethnographic case study is not meant to be an isolated and definitive instantiation of a particular community but rather a call for further case studies to enhance and/or challenge initial findings (one that I hope will emerge from this work). After all, even if we were to carry out a quantitative survey of student opinions many more would be required before we could make any wider assumptions about a particular reality within a community or set of communities. The analysis of the interviews carried out centred on the student narratives about their experiences, drawing on a relatively new area of narrative research known as small story research (see Chap. 4). This type of research turns away from the ‘big story’, life narrative research of the past (i.e. typified by psychoanalytical approa ches) to look specifically at those narratives that emerge in everyday conversation, the fragmentary, often co-constructed narratives that emerge between people with similar shared experiences. Although narratives might at first appear very subjec tive, and hence difficult to derive wider relevancies from, beyond individual per sonal experience, they are also semiotic constructions of the social world (with settings, characters, speech and action). They engage with that world to make sense of it, often in critical ways (i.e. ‘morally’, this is right or this is wrong, or socially, this is how the world is or this is how it is not, etc.), and reveal some of the dominant discourses that pervade everyday life (see Chap. 2). By seeking out patterns of narrative over time and subjecting them to ethnographic observation, the research drew out some of these discourses and highlighted how the students negotiated them together, at times ratifying them, at times contesting them in the moment of their narrative tellings. In the end, the reality of how a profession is constructed through education is every bit as much to do with what institutions claim to do (i.e. through curricula and prescribed classroom practices, etc.), what teaching practices actually occur in the classroom (i.e. how teachers interpret and instigate these, or not) and, perhaps more importantly from the perspective of this research, how students actually perceive the meaning of their own experiences in the field of their professional education. 1.2 Why Interpreting? As previously stated, the field I explore here is the professional training of inter preters. I begin by looking at the relevancy of the profession in today’s world. Interpretation is certainly a global activity, and it has been variously held as being positive for multicultural international communication (i.e. in the EU, and the UN) and inter-communal understanding (as illustrated by the activities of the British Council in Britain). It is also seen as being vital for guaranteeing democratic and human rights in the world today (as stated in European commission reports 2006, 2011). A world shaped by the ever-increasing migration of peoples from countries with often low socio-economic resources and/or torn by war and perse cution, to richer more stable societies (particularly in the West). Peoples whose languages are different from the host nation, limiting their potential to integrate and succeed in their new homes, or even guaranteeing themselves and their children access to basic needs and services. The positive role of interpreters in this context however is not one that is shared by everyone (as illustrated by the central ‘anti-immigrant’ stance at the heart of both the ‘Brexit’ campaign in Britain, and the election promises of Donald Trump in the recent American presidential elections of 2016). Indeed, for people who take a strong anti-immigrant stance, and/or have no particular idea about the possible advantages of intercultural integration, the role of the professional interpreter (with the possible exception of international business communication) might even be criticized as being a waste of time and public resources. Central to this debate then are the roles that interpreters play (or perhaps should play) in society today, and consequently how HE institutions are training those professionals to meet both present and future challenges.
