The Interpretation For Political Affairs Under The Relevance-Adaptation Theory

This study is a tentative research on the interpretation for political affairs (hereinafter shortened as IFPA) through pragmatic analysis with the Relevance-Adaptation Theory, which is mainly supported by two important pragmatic theories:the Relevance Theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson, and the Adaptation Theory proposed by Verschueren. The Relevance Theory provides the interpreter an internal mechanism of utterance comprehension from the perspective of cognition while the Adaptation Theory offers a sufficient theoretic foundation for the target language use. Practically, relevance and adaptation in interpretation is an integrated process of utterance comprehension, language choice and contextual adaptation. Based on combining the interpretive power of the Relevance Theory and the concrete descriptive power of the Adaptation Theory, the author tends to analyze the cognitive system of the interpreter working in comprehending the source utterance and reproducing it in target language to the target hearer(s) during the interpretation, in an attempt to study the interpretation for political affairs (IFPA) from a new angle and to a new height.Under the Relevance-Adaptation Theory, The IFPA is a cross-culture communicative activity out of certain political intentions among the speaker, the interpreter and the hearer(s). As the center of the communication in the IFPA, the interpreter makes ostensive-inferential processes to speaker’s utterance and its relevant context to pursue the optimal relevance for the right utterance comprehension; and makes dynamic adaptation to the context and linguistic choice of the target language from different constitutional levels of language components to convey the informational intention and communicative intention to the target hearer(s) in pursuit of the ideal communicative effect.Based on the Relevance-Adaptation Theory and from the perspective of the cognitive pragmatics, the study analyzes the process of IFPA from the points of the context relevance, context adaptation, utterance comprehension and the target-language reproduction in expectation to provide a new theoretic guidance for IFPA to broaden the vision of the research in this area and to better the work efficiency of IFPA.The thesis comprises5parts.Part I is introduction, which mainly presents the purpose and significance of the study as well as the organization of the thesis. Part II is literature review. The author reviews the studies on the relevance theory, adaptation theory, and the interpretation for political affairs. Some connotations and core concepts of relevance theory and adaptation theory are expounded. The author also gives the evaluation on the previous study and figurers out the Relevance-Adaptation Theory can be served as a new guidance to the interpretation for political affairs (IFPA). Part III is the analysis of IFPA under the Relevance-Adaptation Theory from the aspects of definition of the IFPA, the implication of the role of IFPA interpreter and the context of the IFPA. By analysis, the author points out that the IFPA is a complicated and dynamic communication, in which the interpreter is not only a processor of the language, but should take the full account of the informative intention and communicative intention through the context for the optimal communicative effect. Part IV expounds the application of the Relevance-Adaptation Theory in the IFPA from aspects of the contextual relevance, utterance comprehension, language reproduction and corresponding interpretation strategies. Part V is conclusion, which summarizes the study and shows the contribution and limitation of the study with the suggestion for the further study on the IFPA.