A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Interpreting Performance Of Anchorage Talks Based On Fairclough’s Three-Dimensional Model

This study adopts Fairclough’s three-dimensional model,a kind of critical discourse analysis model,conceiving interpreting discourse as one of the social activities,connecting texts and social activities through discursive practice.This study aims to find out interpreting behaviors constrained to social institution and affected by preexisting ideologies in diplomatic setting.Based on the three-dimensional model,“orders of discourse” is conducted to reveal the semiotic form of social practice by case studies.In “interactional analysis”,the relationship between discursive practice and the texts is interpreted.In “linguistic and semiotic analysis”,the author used online corpus tool—Voyant to run a quantitive analysis on Anchorage Talks,applying systemic functional grammar to find the correlations between original texts and interpreting texts.The transcription of the high-level strategic dialogues between China and the United States in Anchorage is a word-by-word faithful recording,including tone,language fillers,repetition,and self-repairing.The result shows that diplomatic interpreting is highly relevant to a country’s diplomatic strategy and tactic,representing a country’s ideology.For on-site interpreting performance,the Chinese interpreter was more faithful and correct than her counterpart.The U.S.interpreter had problems such as omission,staccato,superfluous language fillers,and logical fallacies.Diplomatic interpreting is a unique setting which is filled with ideological expressions.To convey appropriate messages,an interpreter needs to stay conversant with diplomatic strategies and major international affairs at stake.This study confirms that to create a meaningful conversation between two languages depends upon an interpreter’s understanding of the strategies of diplomacy.According to the theory of discourse analysis,the underlying structure of each language was different.This structural discrepancy produces fundamental challenges for interpreting.To be a faithful interpreter in diplomatic setting,one needs to consider both national condition and international condition using appropriate expression to convey correct messages.