Consecutive Interpreting: A Relevance-Theoretic Perspective

This paper is an attempt to discuss the process of consecutive interpreting within the framework of Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory. Relevance theory mainly studies ostensive-inferential communication and assumes that the key to its success is for the communicators to be governed by the search for optimal relevance, that is both the speaker and addressee tend to spend minimal efforts to gain the maximum effects. This paper justifies the fact that consecutive interpreting is a special ostensive-inferential communication, as the ostensive-inferential process is broken down into two stages: during the comprehension stage, the interpreter is involved in an inferential (as well as decoding) process after hearing the source speech (ostension); during the production stage, the interpreter interprets the source speech into the target speech (ostension) and it is now the addressee who is involved in an inferential (as well as decoding) process. And optimal relevance governs both of the two stages.Firstly, this paper focuses on discussing the comprehension process of consecutive interpreting from the perspective of relevance theory. During the comprehension process, the interpreter infers (as well as decodes) the source speaker's informative intention as well as communicative intention. In general, the recognition of the informative intention would naturally lead to the fulfillment of communicative intention, but the author points out that under circumstances where the informative intention fails to lead to the communicative intention, the maintenance of communicative intention is more crucial to the success of consecutive interpreting. And the whole comprehension process is guided by the search for optimal relevance.Secondly, this paper discusses the production process of consecutive interpreting from the perspective of relevance theory. During the production process, the interpreter produces ostensive stimuli (utterance) which make manifest the speaker's intentions by means of interpretive resemblance and descriptive resemblance. It is now the target audiences who are involved in the inferring process, they have to infer (as well as decodes) the source speaker's intentions from the interpreter's ostensive behaviors. By studying the target audiences'contextual assumptions, the interpreter should try to meet the audiences'expectations. And the whole production process is also guided by the search for optimal relevance.Finally, ways to improve the consecutive interpreting performance are also suggested in this paper, i.e., to expand linguistic and extra-linguistic knowledge so as to enlarge the interpreter's cognitive environment, to incorporate new information into the interpreter's contextual assumptions during comprehension, and to explicate implicatures during production when the interpreter predicts the target addressees would be unable to understand some culture-specific concepts.