| This study is a sociolinguistic description and analysis of a meeting between a university professor, a doctoral student, and an interpreter. The videotape, the transcript and playback interviews with the participants were used to analyze the interpreter's role in the event.; To explore the management of communication, one basic, crucial feature was examined in detail: turn exchanges. The turn exchanges of interpreting, while similar in some respects to turns exchanged in ordinary discourse, have their own unique and complex features that actively involve the interpreter in organizing the exchange. Analysis reveals that, although the intent of each turn originates with each primary speaker, the turns are exchanged between each speaker and the interpreter. The interpreter manages the turn through knowledge of social meaning beyond what appears in the surface form, while taking turns is motivated by speakers out of their own sense of rights and obligations about speaking. The interpreter took turns to offer turns and to allocate a next turn, and he resolved overlap by deciding who would get the turn.; This study demonstrates that the interpreter is not a neutral 'conduit.' Rather, the interpreter's role is active, governed by social and linguistic knowledge of the entire communicative situation, including not only competence in the languages, but also competence in the appropriate "ways of speaking" and in managing the interculture event of interpreting. |
