Klei­nes Kol­lo­quium am CGI im SS 24

Das dritte Kleine Kolloquium am CGI fand am 28.06.2024 statt und umfasste zwei Vorträge:

Vortrag 1: "Linguistic analysis of gender asymmetry in courtroom interaction discourse. Analysis of questioning strategies in domestic violence trials in Italy".
Vortragende Person: Novella Benedetti

This presentation conducts an exploratory analysis of questioning strategies in trials involving cases of domestic violence in Italy. The aim is to compare the questioning of complainants (survivors) and defendants (alleged aggressors) to determine whether gender asymmetry can be said to exist (i.e., difference in the treatment of complainants and defendants). The dataset collected includes three Italian cases of heterosexual domestic violence involving four hearings where complainants were witnesses and four where defendants were witnesses. The analysis is carried out from two perspectives following Mortensen (2020): quantitative (turn-taking, words spoken, average number of words per turn) and qualitative (morphosyntactic question types), the latter following the scalar model implemented by Archer (2005) and subsequently adapted by Mortensen (2020). Due to the peculiarities of the Italian language compared to English, a side coding so to observe the statistical relevance of such peculiarities was carried out. Quantitative results from the dataset show that complainants are asked more questions (over twice as many in cross-examination) and are allowed to speak less in their answers. In terms of morphological question types, a distinction emerges between direct and cross-examination. In direct examination, high-control question types are predominantly directed to defendants; in cross-examination, the opposite occurs. According to these findings, it may, therefore, be said that there is gender asymmetry in the administration of justice within the courtroom interaction in GBV cases.

PhD candidate Novella Benedetti is enrolled in the doctoral program “Translation, Gender, and Cultural Studies” at the Universitat de Vic – Universitat Central de Catalunya (Spain). Her research focuses on the intersection of gender-based violence (especially violence against women) and forensic linguistics. In 2022, she was a visiting scholar at Innsbruck University, and in 2023, at Tor Vergata University (Rome). She is expected to complete her doctoral degree in 2025. Since 2005, the year she obtained her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Translating and Interpreting (Italian, English, and Spanish) from the University of Trieste, she has been working as a freelance language consultant and expert.

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Vortrag 2: "Colonial visions in the ‘future of work’ imaginaries: Unpacking the dehistoricised construction of ‘future workers’"
Vortragende Person: Muneeb Ul Lateef Banday

Drawing from decolonial scholarship, we analysed the problematisation of ‘future of work’ and ‘future workers’ in the policy documents produced by multilateral institutions and multinational consultancy companies. Our analysis shows that the ‘future of work’ imaginaries are produced by establishing the desirability and inevitability of techno-neoliberal futures. These techno-neoliberal ‘future of work’ imaginaries reproduce colonial visions through a focus on objectivity, universalism, presentism and developmentalism. These policy imaginaries construct a techno-neoliberal ‘cyborg’¹ who is a ‘commodified bundle of skillsets’ as the ‘ideal worker’ to legitimise harmonious digital-human neoliberal capitalism. This figure is constructed through the production of redundant/creative, manual/mental, fixed/entrepreneurial binaries. The former is a lesser valued humanity-less figure ascribed to robots, and the latter is the prized race-less/gender-less figure ascribed to the human workers. From a decolonial perspective, these binaries are not neutral and innocent, particularly given the historical association of people of colour, women and other marginalised people with the former and White/European/men with the latter. This form of dehistoricised construction of ‘future workers’ animates the broader narratives of technological progress in these policy imaginaries.
¹The use of the term ‘cyborg’ in these policy imaginaries is entirely at odds with Haraway’s vision of an anti-essentialist, anti-naturalist and anti-foundational politics.

Muneeb Ul Lateef Banday, PhD, is an Assistant Professor (on leave) in Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management at the Goa Institute of Management. Currently, Muneeb is a postdoctoral researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies (ICFG), University of Bern. Its research interests include analysing neoliberalism, (de)coloniality, gender, sexuality, caste, and ageing at work. Muneeb is particularly interested in the interrelationships among power, discourse, and subjectivities. Its research has been published in various conferences, book chapters and journals, including the Journal of Business Ethics, Gender & Development and The Gerontologist.

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