| Discourse markers are used in many contexts. This universal linguistic phenomenon deserves the attention of learners and researchers in the area of interpreting. Although there is not much research of discourse markers in interpreting, interpreters do realize the existence and roles of discourse markers in each process of consecutive interpreting. Against this backdrop, this thesis tries to investigate the roles of discourse markers in consecutive interpreting.Taking authentic data from the consecutive interpreting of the Premier’s Press Conference from 1998 to 2014 as the corpus of this study and basing on relevance theory(Sperber and Wilson, 1986) and Fraser’s classification discourse markers(Fraser, 1999), the author examines four kinds of discourse markers identified and classified by Fraser in consecutive interpreting. Therefore, the thesis addresses three questions: 1) What are the most/least frequently used Discourse markers in Chinese-English consecutive interpreting? 2) How are the Discourse markers effectively used in Chinese-English consecutive interpreting? 3) What are the possible reasons for the different frequencies?By means of the search function of Microsoft Word 2007, the author calculates the frequency of specific words as discourse markers in the corpus. In addition, based on analyzing specific examples from the corpus, the author explores how those discourse markers are used by interpreters in the researched corpus. To explore the possible reasons for the difference in frequencies of discourse markers, the author analyzes the features of premier’s press conference from the perspectives of its theme, interpreting fluency and accuracy and the premier’s image.The results of the study identify some regular patterns of discourse markers in terms of their frequencies in the corpus of the premier’s press conference between 1998 to 2014. That is, the most frequently used discourse markers(emphatic markers) have an obviously high percentage among all the used discourse markers. In addition, the effectiveness of these discourse markers used in the corpus turns out. That is, they can reduce the cognitive load of interpreters, improve the accuracy and fluency of interpreters, and enhance communication in interpreting. Finally the possible reasons for the different frequencies are due to the theme of the interpreting, the accuracy and fluency of interpreters and the special identity of speakers influence the different frequencies of discourse markers. |
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