Jennifer Hartog is an Independent Scholar at the Centre for Research on Language and Culture Contact at Glendon College, York University in Toronto.
Jennifer Hartog was educated in France, England and Germany. She holds a BA (Hons.) in Modern Languages from the University of Leeds and an MA in Theoretical Linguistics from the University of Konstanz. She obtained her Ph.D. in German Linguistics from the University of Hamburg. The subject of her thesis, published in 1996, was an extensive discourse analysis of a complex medical institution.
Analyzing discourse in institutions, which are highly structured by language, has been her main research interest. She has worked with the French CNRS research group “Langage et Travail” and the Centre de Linguistique Théorique at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. She took part in two Collaborative Research Groups (SFB) funded by the German Research Council (DFG): one, “Psychotherapeutic Processes”, at the University of Ulm and the other, “Literature and Anthropology”, at the University of Konstanz. She has been an invited scholar at the Institute of Education in London, the Akdeniz Universitesi in Antalya and several times at the EHESS in Paris. Before joining the Centre de Recherche en Education Franco-Ontarienne (CREFO) as a visiting scholar at the University of Toronto in early 2009, she taught in the Department of German Linguistics at the University of Hamburg.
Her current research is focused on processes of interpreting and translation in multilingual societies and their institutions as well as in the transnational world. Analysing language as the key to creating change in multilingual constellations is a major theme throughout her work, She is completing a manuscript on decision-making via lay interpreters in medical discourse. Further, she is working on the limits of language in the area of trauma, memory and language in the context of WWII survivors. This has led her, more recently, to reflect on the situation of Indigenous peoples in Canada and the crucial role of language and communication in achieving change.
Some key publications:
(1996) Das genetische Beratungsgespräch. Institutionalisierte Kommunikation zwischen Experten und Nicht-Experten.(= Genetic Counselling. Institutionalized Communication between Experts and Non-Experts) Tübingen: Narr
(2006) Beyond ‘misunderstandings’ and ‘cultural stereotypes’ In: Bührig, K. & J. ten Thije (eds.) Beyond Misunderstanding. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 175-188
(2020) Immigrants and refugees in Toronto and their encounters with health care: new research paths In: Hohenstein, C. and Levy-Tödter, M. (eds.) Multilingual Healthcare. Wiesbaden: Springer, 191-208
Contact: jhartog@yorku.ca or: jenniferannhartog@gmail.com
Research Interest
Translation and interpreting in institutions
Trauma, memory and language
Research Activities
Network Medical Communication ( University of Hanburg (D) and Winterthur (CH)
Communication between Indigenous peoples and non-indigenous people in Canada
Key Publications:
(1996) Das genetische Beratungsgespräch. Institutionalisierte Kommunikation zwischen Experten und Nicht-Experten.(= Genetic Counselling. Institutionalized Communication between Experts and Non-Experts) Tübingen: Narr
(2006) Beyond ‘misunderstandings’ and ‘cultural stereotypes’ In: Bührig, K. & J. ten Thije (eds.) Beyond Misunderstanding. Amsterdam: Benjamins
(to appear 2020) Immigrants and refugees in Toronto and their encounters with health care: new research paths In: Hohenstein, C. and Levy-Tödter, M. (eds.) Multilingual Healthcare. Wiesbaden: Springer
