Epistemic Brokerage in Triadic Interactions: How Interpreters Wield Power Within Healthcare Settings

This workshop explores concrete ways that healthcare interpreters serve as epistemic brokers, shaping power dynamics through strategic decisions that they make as they transmit meanings. The talk will begin with an overview of how the concepts of social knowledge and power relate to one another, and in turn how they manifest in interaction through the epistemic brokerage that interlocutors engage in. This section will conclude with an articulation of how interpreters, given their expertise, have access to unique forms of social power that can be leveraged within their professional practice.