Interpreting Government Press Conferences In China:Power, Interaction And Discourse

This thesis reports an empirical probe into the power of interpreters at government press conferences during the 2015 National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference sessions (the two sessions for short) of China. Traditionally, interpreting research focuses on the mental mechanics of conference interpreting, but interpreting is also a socially-situated activity, where interaction inevitably breeds the question of power. This study thus wishes to pursue the sociology of interpreting and deconstruct interpreters'social role in the context of Chinese politics.Adopting Michel Foucault's concept of power and verbal rituals, this study intends to investigate interpreters'power and how discourse and interaction in situ help to construct or deconstruct their power. As 2015 witnessed the first use of simultaneous interpreting in press conferences, the author was able to set up a parallel corpus and video database of consecutive and simultaneous interpretation at the conferences. This study borrows Mason and Ren's distinction of interactional and institutional power (2012) and dissects qualifications, and verbal and non-verbal strategies of interpreters. Analysis of data reveals a general phenomenon that power is negotiated among all stakeholders of interpreter-mediated events. Specifically, three trends emerge:a) government staff interpreters in press conferences are endowed with considerable but controlled institutional and interactional power. Their power also greatly benefits from the interplay of institutional and interactional role;b) freelance simultaneous interpreters have virtually no institutional power, while their limited interactional power mainly originates from the selection of discourse and conference preparation;c) interpreters'power varies with modes, settings and individuals. Underlying issues in social encounters such as trust, distance, and ethics would affect power relations.