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Much has been said and written about the need to include constituents’ voices in designing and implementing services and programs for victims of domestic violence. To ensure effective service provision, policy making, and planning, it is important to obtain input from the target population during decision-making processes (Flyvbjerg ).1 Constituents’ voices, however, can only be heard or taken into account when planners, policy makers, and service providers are able to correctly interpret their language use and communication patterns. In this essay, I argue that both understanding and taking into account ethnocultural communication differences is essential for effective policy making and planning. Ethnocultural communication refers to communicative differences that arise from membership in a specific ethnic group. More specifically, ethnocultural communication refers to communication patterns and language usage influenced by and rooted in cultural norms. The issue of ethnocultural language and communication is critical, because it is not just the inability to speak English that is a barrier for battered South Asian immigrant women, but also when it is spoken, how this English is spoken. In fact, language may pose a more daunting hurdle for immigrant survivors who speak English, as service providers may assume that they understand what is being said, which they might literally but not contextually. With regard to language and battered immigrant women, the majority of studies have focused on immigrant survivors’ inability to speak English as the main obstacle to their seeking or receiving information and services (Dutton, Orloff, and Hass ; Kim ; Orloff ; Preisser ). The fact that a large number of immigrant women from India have the ability to converse in English, and yet they remain either unaware of existing domestic violence related services or unable to utilize them effectively (Domestic Violence Research Project ; Preisser ; Warrier a) indicates that there may be factors other than language fluency involved in this problem. Since the majority of Asian Indians speak English, their 12 bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb A Communicative Perspective on Assisting Battered Asian Indian Immigrant Women MANDEEP GREWAL 164 Ch012.qxd 11/3/06 5:12 PM Page 164 A COMMUNICATIVE PERSPECTIVE 165 narratives allow for a more nuanced exploration of why and how battered immigrant women remain unable to use available services. All immigrants, in particular women, undergo a process of redefining themselves as they reconcile ethnic-specific ways of being with adaptive behaviors and roles expected of them in their host milieu (Espin ). One ethnic-specific factor, not unique but of foremost priority to immigrant Indian women is the need to keep their marriages intact (Abraham b; Warrier a). It is, then, not surprising that at least as a first step, Indian immigrant women overwhelmingly engage in passive resistance strategies such as silence and avoidance against their abusers (Mehrotra ). Even when they do seek assistance, mostly it is not to leave the marriage but to find ways to cope with the abuse or to change their partners ’ abusive behavior. Even though research finds that ethnic specific, sociocultural factors can result in communication patterns and language use divergent from those expected and practiced in the mainstream (Lull ), there is no examination of how ethnocultural communication impacts access to and use of services by immigrants. This chapter provides instances of immigrant Indian women’s ethnocultural language use to articulate the linkage between their communication patterns and help-seeking behavior. Drawing upon the narratives of twenty-five immigrant Indian women, I document how ethnoculturally specific language use and communication patterns impact the help-seeking behavior of battered women and effectiveness of service provision. My goal is to highlight this need for planners, policy makers, and service providers to both appreciate and understand the differences in immigrant survivors ’ language use and communication so that they may communicate with, and serve, their immigrant constituents more effectively. Methodology This essay is based on face-to-face, in-depth interviews with fifteen women over two separate one-hour sessions in Detroit, Michigan, and New Brunswick, New Jersey. In addition, structured telephone interviews were conducted with ten survivors residing in New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New York. At the end of their sessions, the face-to-face interviewees also completed the questionnaire used in the telephone interviews. Thus, a total of fifteen face-to-face and twenty-five structured interviews constitute the foundation of this study. I personally conducted all the interviews. The size of the research sample was not predetermined . Rather, I conducted the in-depth and structured interviews to the point when theoretical saturation...

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