L’accettazione della diversità nella mediazione interlinguistica e interculturale,

This paper focuses on interlingual and intercultural mediation (IIM),concentrating on its function of promoting cultural acceptance. IIM is analysed in interactions involving an interpreter-mediator, a foreign citizen and a member of an Italian institution. Such interaction is interpreted as a particular communication system included in and making reference to other functional systems inside a global society. IIM integrates cultural forms with interactive structures. Analysing the coupling between cultural forms derived by functional systems and specific interactive structures in the data, the paper shows that IIM can promote acceptance of the different cultural orientations emerging in interpreted-mediated interactions. The analysis demonstrates that both cultural forms deriving from functional systems and those diverging ones, deriving from immigrants' participation can be presented and empowered through interpreted-mediated interaction. A series of transcripts of interpreter-mediated sequences, concerning medical and juridical IIM, is analysed in order to provide examples of how this approach can be applied.