Mason2006

From emcawiki
Jump to: navigation, search
Mason2006
BibType ARTICLE
Key Mason2006
Author(s) Ian Mason
Title On Mutual Accessibility of Contextual Assumptions in Dialogue Interpreting
Editor(s)
Tag(s) underdeterminacy, dialogue interpreting, inference
Publisher
Year 2006
Language
City
Month
Journal Journal of Pragmatics
Volume 38
Number 3
Pages 359–373
URL Link
DOI 10.1016/j.pragma.2005.06.022
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

Download BibTex

Abstract

The fundamental determinacy of linguistically encoded meaning has remained as a tacit assumption underlying much work in the study of interlingual interpreting and interpreter behaviour. When confronted with the real-time, on-line nature of interpreter-mediated crosscultural encounters, however, such a view rapidly becomes untenable and an alternative model of the retrieval and representation of meanings becomes necessary. Adopting a relevance theoretic account of interpreter-mediated communication but also drawing on some insights from conversation analysis, this article examines evidence of participant moves – and particularly interpreter moves – to show inferencing at work and the evolving, intra-interactional nature of context. Indeed, a central contention is that interpreters’ performance can provide explicit evidence of take-up, of the sense they make of others’ talk and how they respond to it, in a process of joint negotiation of contextual assumptions. However, whereas mutual accessibility of such assumptions would seem to be a precondition for establishing relevance, the evidence presented here suggests that divergent contexts may emerge among participants, even though the ‘speech-exchange system’ (Schegloff, 1999) of interpreter mediation appears to proceed in an unproblematic way.

Notes