Relevance-Theoretic Study On Listening Comprehension In Interpretation

This dissertation is designed to analyze the listening comprehension in interpretation from the perspective of relevance theory. To some extent, the interpreting process can be divided into two phases, which are comprehension and reproduction. Comprehension is the primary step in the process of interpretation, and it decides the quality of the whole task. Therefore, the author decides to focus on the first step of listening comprehension in this dissertation by putting aside the reproduction phase without discussion.The study on the listening comprehension has been undertaken from different perspectives. But relevance theoretic approach must be a relatively pioneering one in the study of listening comprehension. It provides a cognitive perspective to make analysis on this field, which systematically expounds the theme from academic level to practical utilization.In 1986 Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson proposed Relevance Theory, which takes the view that communication is an ostensive-inferential process. The speaker manifests an ostensive stimulus to the hearer for showing his intensions; then the hearer infers the informative and communication intensions not only through the new information, but more essentially through the common context with the speaker, which is the most important factor in the ostensive-inferential communication. As Sperber and Wilson defined that context is understood as the set of premises used in interpreting an utterance. It is a psychological notion, and more precisely, it refers to a part of the cognitive environment of the hearer. Based on the relevance theory, the communication between the speaker and hearer always adheres to the principle that they can achieve the only optimal relevance, which is considered to be the principle of relevance. How can they say they have got the optimal relevance? Gutt posted the opinion that relevance should be seen as the cost-benefit relation of processing effort spent versus contextual effects obtained. That is to say, optimal relevance will yield adequate contextual effects, without requiring unnecessary processing effort.Through discussing from the relevance-theoretic perspective, the dissertation proves that interpretation can be considered to be a special form of communication, as it also holds the feature of ostension-inference. However, differing from in the normal communication, the speaker and the target audience cannot achieve the direct communication in interpretation. It is safe to say that the interpreter plays an irreplaceable role, as he is the mediator between the two parties of the communication. This dissertation is composed from the viewpoint of an interpreter as a listener to the source language speech. During the whole process of interpreting, it is difficult to achieve the identical cognitive environment as in the common communication. Therefore, in order to guarantee the efficiency and the quality of the task, the interpreter has to seek for the relevance as close as possible to the source language text through inferring the ostensive stimulus in the source language utterances, as well as the contexual assumptions. As listening comprehension holds a unique position in interpretation, it can be considered to be the start point for the whole task and also the first lesson for the new learners.Various questions are discussed in the dissertation, as what to comprehend, how to comprehend, problems resulting from the lack of relevance, as well as the practical preparations before taking up a real interpreting task, so as to provide a clue for the new learners.