Overcoming Language Barriers in Domestic Violence Situations: A Review

Abstract

The intricate relationship between language and aggression especially when it comes to subordinating abuse is not explored by the instrumentalist approach. Collective aggression politics implies that controversial politics is a way to describe collective violence. According to this perspective violence can be viewed as a form of discourse that involves systems in which various groups make claims against one another. These claims recipients are likely to react violently in this situation. Both sides continue to coexist within the framework of divisive politics which makes the transition from peaceful to violent discourse the main problem. Violence in this situation is a part of a continuous dialogue between opposing parties rather than just an isolated incident. Political claims and rebuttals can spiral out of control and result in violent reactions in this exchange. This shift from amicable to violent interaction illustrates how political differences and unresolved conflicts can create a climate in which conflict is used as a means of communication. These interactions are sustained by the underlying political framework in which parties are continuously renegotiating their stances and answering each other’s claims. According to the process violence in this instance is not just the breakdown of peaceful discourse but rather its continuation through more drastic means. It demonstrates how social divisions can cause discourse to change with what starts out as a peaceful exchange progressively taking on a more hostile and violent form. A shift from nonviolent politics to violence entails not only a shift in the type of discourse but also in how various groups perceive and react to one another’s arguments.

Introduction

This article examines the linguistic challenges immigrant women face when seeking domestic violence help. It helps law police, prosecutors, courts, correctional facilities, and shelters understand their responsibility to immigrant women who have been domestically abused. The study examines language and violence, focussing on domestic abuse communication issues (Voolma, 2018). One major theme is language's inability to portray violence. Language function must be examined both when and when not present. Silence can prevent immigrant women from expressing their trauma and preventing language from emerging from assault. Fear of cultural customs or a lack of host nation language can make it hard for victims to report abuse (Heron & Eisma, 2021). Language may not address violence because it cannot convey the intense and destructive nature of some forms of violence. The inability of words to fully depict the full magnitude of abuse's pain and ruin is a drawback.

The study also discusses violence's beginnings, growth, and effects on communities and states. This section discusses how violence develops and how it affects individual relationships and the social and political landscape. The study claims that violence is a long-term process that affects systems. According to Sweet, (2019), these cycles of violence can affect the development and growth of political organisations and communities, possibly leading to the adoption of societal norms and behaviours that support or oppose violence. The third theme explores violence's complex relationship with time. The study shows that time is vital to healing and rehabilitation, not just in violent art. Time is needed to grieve and recover from violence. This topic reflects the emotional and psychological journey of domestic abuse victims as time reminds and heals them. Understanding how victims recover from violence and regain control of their life requires understanding that healing is a continuous process (Sabri, Simonet & Campbell, 2018).

This paper highlights immigrant women's domestic abuse challenges through language. It explores how language and violence interact by understating and understating its breadth. Violence's persistence and impact on social and political structures are also examined in the article. The final section examines how violence impacts people over time and how long it takes to heal. These observations aim to help law enforcement, legal, and social care professionals assist immigrant women suffering domestic abuse (Robinson, Ravi & Voth Schrag, 2021). Many crime victims are denied legal support and services due to service providers' ignorance of these requirements or inability to give linguistic access. Despite federal regulations requiring multilingual social services, millions of Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and Limited English Proficient (LEP) victims confront linguistic difficulties due to practice gaps. Inaccessibility limits their help capacity, leaving them vulnerable and underserved (Pathak, Dhairyawan & Tariq, 2019).

Language issues prevented almost 20% of Southern California Latina immigrants who had been abused from seeking police aid. These findings emphasise the importance of linguistic accessibility in crime victim services. If they can't connect with service providers, law enforcement, and the legal system, Bishop & Bettinson, (2018) said victims may be unable to report crimes, seek protection, or get the necessary help throughout rehabilitation. Ensure that all crime victim services are inclusive and accessible to Deaf and hard of hearing people and those with limited English proficiency by improving linguistic accessibility. This involves helping Deaf-specific violence survivors' organisations and enhancing general victim assistance providers. Despite overwork and underfunding, these specialised organisations help Deaf crime victims. They struggle to meet service demand due to resource constraints (Seinfeldet al., 2018).

Deaf women in the US are twice as likely as hearing women to experience sexual and domestic violence according to research. Even with these increased risks Deaf survivors encounter many obstacles when trying to get assistance. For instance, Deaf people cannot use the conventional phone-based 9-1-1 systems instead they must use alternate forms of communication like text messaging or video calls with sign language interpreters. Deaf survivors also frequently face doubts about their reliability as witnesses in court which makes it even harder for them to get justice and assistance. To guarantee that Deaf survivors can obtain the same degree of assistance and protection as their hearing counterparts these systemic barriers underscore the necessity for customized services and policies (Fieldet al., 2018).

Even though language accessibility in social services is required by federal law there are still significant gaps in its application particularly for Deaf and LEP crime victims. It is imperative to overcome these language barriers to effectively support and protect victims of sexual and domestic abuse. Enhancing language accessibility generally enhancing the capacities of specialized organizations and tackling the difficulties faced by Deaf victims of crime should be the main priorities. By taking these steps, it is possible to guarantee that all survivors get the support and justice they are entitled to irrespective of any communication or language barriers.

Literature Review

Flasch, Murray & Crowes, (2017) wanted to resist the tendency to emphasise remarkable events above daily ones. They say this subordination occurs when a violent act is intensively analysed because it is frightening, awful, and incomprehensible. They argue this methodology underpins most traditional violent conflict research. These studies consider the event remarkable and stand out in history due to its magnitude. Due to their incomprehensibility, these events are also considered historical anomalies (Flasch, Murray & Crowe, 2017).

According to Flasch, Murray & Crowe, (2017), this anomaly occurred when human savagery momentarily replaces society and civilisation collapses. These few violent occurrences can distort our view of conflict by disregarding the more persistent, less dramatic mechanisms that feed violence. Traditional approaches may highlight such episodes as aberrations, neglecting systemic factors that promote violent conflict over time. The rejection of this technique requires a more unbiased vision that does not elevate occasional violent occurrences above the everyday realities of human life.

Authors react differently to subordination by utilising different submissions. The study takes a nuanced perspective, considering India's 1947 partition, Indira Gandhi's 1984 killing, and the riots that followed. She doesn't distinguish 1984 from everyday events. Instead of inserting these big moments into the narrative or placing them against it, they use them to mediate between the ordinary and the event.

This strategy blurs the lines by hinting that these testimonies are neither separate nor part of the event. This method is harder than it seems. Her ability to execute this difficult task makes her ethnography successful and separates it from others conducted in communities that have experienced similar tragedy. Many studies approach remarkable events and regular experiences as distinct incidents that disrupt daily life, but the author emphasises their interconnectedness. She challenges conventional narratives that emphasise the disruption caused by traumatic events by showing how they shape and are shaped by people's daily lives.

Murrayet al.,(2015) examined how remarkable events shape people and communities. This method matches the authors. Murray and colleagues found that this complicated connection shapes identities and experiences. This perspective is reflected in their understanding of subject creation, which shows that trauma violence and suffering are intertwined with daily life. It's crucial to recognise how people negotiate the remarkable and the ordinary to build their identities and lives.

In this paradigm, the subject builds and reimagines the world. This dynamic process creates a complicated and ever-changing picture with changing limits. The subject's relationship with the outside world is fluid and changing. Language is fundamental to the subject-outside world connection since it is the main medium. This means that there are no absolutes or definitive conclusions and that subject-world relations are ongoing. The discourse is continually evolving as the subject and outside world influence it. Thus, being a subject involves constantly negotiating language- and world-influenced boundaries.

According to Murrayet al., (2015), the topic is a limit of the world, not a part of it. The universe is not a predefined framework from which subjects are born, thus neither the world nor the subject is passive makers. Instead, their relationship is dynamic. Wittgenstein's solipsistic theory supports his claim that my language's constraints define my universe.

Subjects can change their own world limits using words, but not the objective world. As they walk through their environment, the subject's reality changes. Being an autonomous referent changes the world, but it affects how subjects perceive and interact with reality. This creates a continual contact between the subject and the outside world, modifying and growing the subject's reality. Language perception and interaction impact persons' developing worldview.

A subject integrates different experiences into a coherent whole after thoroughly engaging with the universe. Being a subject is limited; hence this totality must have limits. However, the limits are never fully defined, therefore this wholeness cannot be described or imagined. We cannot express what language expresses, according to Riegler, (2011). In other words, language cannot fully describe the subjects' experience. The subject can use language to construct and understand their world, but the language cannot understand everything. Language's limitations and promise, which can never fully capture experience, constantly change reality's incomplete borders.

A violent sensation so severe that it may wipe out the globe is described by this grammatical mistake, the conclusion of criterion. However, this book examines how such experiences affect people and their circumstances, not to recreate these horrible events. The book examines how memory of violent occurrences affects present-day interactions and the individual and their surroundings. The author enjoys this part of the book most (De Moissac & Bowen, 2019). It's astonishing and amazing that such private and emotional events were exploited to develop a shared language. The author also emphasises the issue of whether stable standards would allow such a language to evolve. It shows how difficult it is to communicate and understand incredibly painful events, which is both exhilarating and horrifying. The effort to create this language from tremendous violence and vulnerability is amazing and unsettling (Steinberget al., 2016).

This initiative challenges the idea that world-annihilating violence, often labelled as lunacy, should be ignored or kept silent. The project confronts violence in this region and analyses the relationship between language and violence, even though it is commonly assumed that none exists. The key difference between Murray's strategy and this initiative is. Despite Murray's position on the difficulty of using language to describe violence—particularly silence's function in conveying the unspeakable—the project's focus shifts from what can or cannot be stated to (un)knowability. This effort contends that the issue is how to recognise or understand violence, not how it is communicated. This paradoxical claim questions the terminology used to define language and violence (Salami, Salma & Hegadoren, 2019).

Murray's approach is insightful, yet it excludes a major field of study. Despite its strengths, her work fails to examine how language and violence could interact in unfathomable or impossible scenarios. To understand Murray's writing, the study will revisit the three key ideas and examine how they manifest. As Murray did in 2015, language and violence are the first topic. Murray's methodology will be examined to identify its flaws and offer a new perspective on language violence and meaning even in the inconceivable.

In this context, silence during violence can be considered communication. A victim of violence keeps quiet to share their anguish, not to avoid expression. Since scientific methods cannot quantify pain, social factors must be employed to understand this communication. It involves acknowledging that the individual lives in a world of devastation and loss. This view places the burden of understanding another's silent suffering on the listener. The listener must also watch the subject's body language and reactions (Mannell, Jackson & Umutoni, 2016).

Stock, (2023) claimed that gestures can reveal the underlying circumstances of life and death—what forms of existence or suffering lead to words. For an ethnographer, this means noting how silence or the absence of words may indicate that a subject feels numb or shut off from life. Words can illustrate how trauma has eroded a person's relationship to life, not merely express oneself. The ethnographer must grasp that movements and words show how experience and pain are represented in non-verbal ways, revealing the depths of suffering.

The second theme is how violence starts and persists. However, these terms should not be used literally in this work. They reject the concept that violent occurrences are intrinsically corrupt or disrupt a seemingly perfect time before the Partition of India. She disputes the oversimplified idea that violence disrupts a peaceful past. This perspective emphasises violence's complex development and persistence (Heron & Eisma, 2021).

Abducted women emerge in nationalist state discourse to construct a sexual contract that allows a male-dominated social contract. Statehood depends on these two connected contracts. The state discourse in this historical context recognised women's suffering solely in relation to sovereignty. The state merely accepted women's violence as important for establishing its control, then discounted their pain. This shows how state-building framed violence against women in a broader political framework and used their experiences to further nationalist aspirations (Sabri, Simonet & Campbell, 2018).

McCleary-Sillset al., (2016) stressed that women can develop their own subjectivity despite state discourse's oppression, avoiding state-centred determinism. Despite a system that defines and controls women's experiences, this method shows women's resilience. They acknowledge state discourse's considerable impact on women's lives. Instead, she handles the clash between magical state power and rational-bureaucratic state structure. In the magical state, symbolic ideological forces blend social norms and beliefs, while in the rational-bureaucratic state, formal structures maintain order and control. According to their work, the dynamic conflict between magical and rational state authority allows women to develop their subjectivity without being entirely characterised by state oppression or violence. This sophisticated approach emphasises the complex link between individual agency and state power, showing that even if the state exerts significant control, individuals and groups can develop identities that resist or exceed it.

Mannell, Jackson & Umutoni (2016) suggested that the state swings between magical and logical modes, which is why people may chant for the law during violent rioting. It happens daily in the state's activities, not just in emergencies. The constant interaction between logical and magical modes blurs the boundary between the founding violence of the law that establishes political authority and its maintenance violence. As the state switches between modes, it becomes harder to tell criminal from legal. Daily encounters in local communities question the limits between lawfulness and criminality. Rumours and official probes into governmental acts are two ways this scepticism may arise. Legitimisation begins with the initial violence needed to form the state and continues as it upholds violence through laws and practices that govern communities. This is especially evident in how state activities affect community members. In regard to the state's formal institutions, some regions may appear peripheral, yet analytically they are not. Despite not being legally recognised, these disciplines are directly tied to community life and social reality (Field et al., 2018).

This investigation shows that official law cannot fully regulate these communities. Because official legal codes have limited power over all aspects of social life, state discourse cannot fully generate or define local community themes. Murrayet al.,(2015) stated that written laws cannot adequately explain or regulate people's lives. Showing how state power is challenged in daily encounters and agreements in local communities highlights its limits. Local contexts limit and mediate national authority, making state power and the rule of law more flexible and negotiable.

The state's founding violence continues after rioters return home and law and order are restored or murder and kidnapping stop. This aggression starts a deeper, longer-lasting process. After visible violence fades, state-inflicted violence permeates ordinary life. It affects relationships and interactions as it goes through people's and communities' daily lives. Murrayet al.,(2015) demonstrated that foundational violence continues in subtle ways through social interactions and daily experiences after order is restored.

Two routes exist from here. The first route links to Glovers, (2017), whose ideas the author finds troublesome and inspiring. Despite admiring Glover’s effort, the author is unwilling to accept it. Glover believes that Africans have failed to create their own stories about famine, war, and anguish because they deny their past. He believes this denial limits the agency of those who have suffered these horrors and keeps Africa in the spotlight as a victim rather than a subject. Glover wants to confront and reclaim Africa's painful past. He says the challenge is retrieving and conquering the past to turn survivors' and victims' unresolved history into a story of agency and self-determination.

Glovers' method suggested that acknowledging and accepting the terrible past might help you escape victimhood and write more empoweringly. The victim's tale can be affirmed and agency filled. This shift requires actively engaging with the past to rebuild identity and agency rather than avoiding it. Historical violence cannot be eliminated, but it can be reframed and recreated to empower individuals and groups. The author disagrees with Glover's framework despite being influenced by it. Her main argument is that victimhood alone cannot always lead to agency. The complexity of violence and memory and how they affect daily life require a deeper understanding than Glover's paradigm affords.

Ramsay, (2019) offered a new perspective on violence-induced subjectivity. This technique differs from writing or self-expression frameworks. He believes that expressing sadness that fully acknowledges the past's destruction and irreversibility creates subjectivity. This approach holds that silent and unacknowledged previous experiences, such as blindness, should not be used to flee or escape. Ramsay emphasises that people can assert their subjectivity even when they don't seem to recognise or face their sufferings. This strategy challenges the concept that writing about or facing terrible events is the only way to cope. Unlike Glovers, Ramsay does not focus on writing the self or how language expresses or fails to communicate experiences. Instead, he emphasises showing than telling. This allows him to study how people verbally and nonverbally process trauma. Ramsay believes gestures, behaviours, and daily routines may convey meaning in addition to words. This shows how humans handle and understand inexplicable events. Ramsay can study how people manage with their violent pasts by studying these exhibiting behaviours, especially in contexts where these pasts are not fully available.

Ramsay's key notion is that subjectivity is continually being recreated through mundane actions. These practices emphasise silent awareness of what can be stated, done, or understood rather than extraordinary deeds. Ramsay believes subjectivity is developed by carefully navigating these limitations, whether they be societal standards, official state speech, or catastrophic event quiet. Grieving becomes a meaningful act of existing in the world while understanding that some parts are lost forever and cannot be replaced. This mourning process acknowledges the past violence's ongoing impact without reclaiming it. Ramsay's approach differs from theoretical frameworks that view trauma as a narrative. Instead, he suggests that trauma survivors continually and quietly negotiate their past's limits. Subjectivity is constantly generated and altered via everyday trauma-coping methods including quiet protest, tiny acts of resistance, and grief. These acts may not be dramatic or political, but they are crucial to understanding how individuals cope with life after violence (Ramsay, 2019).

Even though they seem little, Ramsay stressed the relevance of these habitual acts in subject creation. These actions discreetly contradict language and state authority and show a deep understanding of them. Ramsay's study indicates that combating violence involves everyday activities people use to cope with pain and loss, not only unusual acts of resistance or political disturbance. People reinforce their subjectivity through these behaviours even when they seem ignorant to the violence in their life (Ramsay, 2019).

It's a myth that time can fix daily violence, which often requires rewriting and overwriting daily exchanges. Innes, (2016) claimed that time only impacts what is available and that prudence is needed to fully understand this process's achievements and failures. This requires close study of word-gesturing interactions. Time creates the impression of absence some women communicate through silence, suggested Innes, (2016). They appear to express their unspoken feelings through gestures. According to Innes, these ladies use grieving gestures to connect with the deceased and need a stone-like communication technique to reach them (Innes, 2016).

Innes's inquiry also touches on rumours, which might inspire violence like funfair crowd conduct due to their uncertain authorship. Rumours can give anybody access to a frozen past. As the author notes, these words lose their historical value because they repeat and circulate like floating words. Like the words, this past is independent from the individuals who say them. Just as words are detached from their source, the mob can be detached from the violence it incites. Widely used language like they were animals, and we were things convey brutality, misery, loss, and dehumanisation, helping the mob disassociate themselves from the words and avoid culpability. The author believes anthropologists should study how survivors and victims’ claim life by deleting these terms—leading words home. This everyday task can reduce the damage of these fleeting remarks. By focussing on how victims reclaim agency and meaning after abuse, anthropologists can promote healing and life.

The author finds that a wince or other facial spasm in the predicative moment indicates discomfort when examining interaction dynamics. Pain is universally relatable in the wince. People's ability to understand these motions as anguish throughout the proclamation shows how universal human communication is. Winces, unlike other involuntary facial movements like tics, reflect a widely recognised emotional state, highlighting the intricacy of how pain and suffering are represented and understood. Thus, dealing with violence and its aftermath requires understanding how memory language and gestures affect daily encounters. Innes, (2016) emphasised the importance of understanding how grieving gestures and rumours affect violence memory and healing. This method emphasises the delicate balance between what is said, shown, and unsaid or unseen, requiring close attention to everyday behaviours that reveal and contain the long-term impacts of violence.

Discussion

According to traditional philosophy which places a strong emphasis on comprehending a languages logic vocabulary and exact meanings people fail because they are not proficient in it. This point of view emphasizes how ambiguous everyday language is and implies that mastery calls for consistent philosophical work. On the other hand, the concept of mastering a language—especially the specialized language of philosophy—is abandoned in ordinary language philosophy. Rather it emphasizes how people are only partially introduced to the world. By placing more emphasis on the everyday and practical application of language than on the quest for abstract linguistic mastery this change marks a break from the conventional philosophical approach (De Moissac & Bowen, 2019).

They acknowledge that Wittgenstein like others recognized the importance of language in facilitating communication and that our common forms of life are enmeshed in it. Instead of being predetermined agreements these life forms evolve via common practices norms and regulations. Citing Cavells research Staten, (2022) pointed out that reaching an agreement is a multifaceted process that incorporates a variety of norms customs examples and social practices. Wittgenstein stresses that human shared practices and lived experiences not logical reasoning or deduction are the sources of language (Staten, 2022). He goes on to say that our shared forms of life rather than conscious methodical agreement are the foundation of our mutual understanding and linguistic agreement. The mutual understanding that results from shared life experiences according to Staten is what enables human communication and language is how we discern what is true and what is not. According to Staten, (2022) Wittgenstein finds it astounding that there is such a deep and pervasive degree of agreement among people which enables efficient and quick communication. Wittgenstein was fascinated by the ease and comprehensiveness of human communication through language which is based on customs and practices that are fundamental to human existence rather than theoretical agreements (Staten, 2022).

Staten’s, (2022) claimed that his statements are instruments for comprehension that are eventually discarded after their usefulness is demonstrated emphasizes how ephemeral philosophical ideas are. According to Staten a concept should be abandoned once it has been transcended by using it as a step because it no longer makes sense at a higher level of comprehension. But by highlighting the dialectical character of human communication Fuchs, (2020) presented a more nuanced strategy. Fuchs, (2020) considered transcendence to be a fundamental aspect of our human limitations in contrast to Staten who sees it as an unsuccessful attempt to go beyond common comprehension. In this context transcendence emphasizes the limited nature of human existence and our ongoing interaction with it rather than signifying a movement beyond the norm.

The foundation of Fuchs’s, (2020) approached in contrast to Staten’s, (2022) is the knowledge that we are limited beings because of our limitations. This turns attention to language as a means of comprehension that reflects our frailties as human beings rather than delving into madness or nonsensical realms. This view of transcendence is consistent with Fuchs’s concept of the thing itself which is illusive and impossible to fully comprehend. Since interpretation is a continuous process that continuously shapes our understanding this thing—such as the idea of violence—plays a crucial role in determining how we view the world. This viewpoint emphasizes the value of the dialectical fusion of horizons in which knowledge develops via the interaction of various viewpoints without presuming a final conclusive transcendence.

Conclusion

Enhancing the ability of both new and established Deaf organizations to address the problem of domestic abuse is the goal of the Action to End Domestic Abuse initiative. By offering essential support to Deaf survivors this initiative aims to close a sizable gap that has been identified. According to Nancy Smith director of Veras Centre on Victimisation and Safety victims of violence are essentially shut out of the services they require when they are unable to get in touch with those who could help them. More Deaf survivors will be able to safely flee abuse heal from trauma and eventually obtain justice thanks to this initiative which will help organizations that are frequently the only ones prepared to respond to these calls expand their vital work. Vera has spent many years working to increase language access for immigrants and Deaf people. Their Translating Justice and Deaf Action initiatives which are the result of years of cooperation reflect this effort. Vera started collaborating with different law enforcement organizations victim support organizations and other pertinent authorities in the legal system in 2005 to address the linguistic and cultural barriers that frequently prevent services from being provided to diverse communities. As a result of this partnership training programs and manuals were published to promote improved comprehension and communication. Regarding the idea of violence, the fundamental framework for the notion of violence as the thing itself includes the transcendental evasiveness that connects disparate horizons of understanding. Since violence is inherently elusive it is important to recognize that it is hard to define or interpret. At this point it is crucial to emphasize that Derrida’s work in later chapters will add even more to this fundamental framework guaranteeing that the framework for comprehending violence stays dynamic and ever improving. This ground will be a groundless ground rather than a firm foundation enabling it to preserve the ongoing flux inherent in the idea of violence. This fluidity is a crucial component of how violence functions in interpersonal relationships as was covered in previous sections. The writers started to understand that violence defies easy explanation by both observers and those who experience it firsthand. The concept of violence is difficult to define precisely. Rather it creates fused vistas or viewpoints that are combined into a shared understanding that is developed via dialogue. The premise is that these merged viewpoints do not result from strict interpretations but rather from participants ongoing engagement and discussion which shapes a shared understanding of violence. In situations where communication obstacles like those experienced by Deaf survivors of abuse compromise the efficacy of support services this process of collective interpretation is essential to addressing and responding to violence. The actual nature of violence with all of its subtleties and complexity can be better comprehended and addressed through this dynamic process.

Conflict of Interest

The author declares that they have no conflict of interests.

Acknowledgement

The authors acknowledge the support and guidance received during the development of this article. They express gratitude for the constructive feedback, insightful suggestions, and encouragement provided, which contributed to the refinement of this work. Additionally, the authors appreciate the access to resources and facilities that enabled the successful completion of this research.