On Application Of Relevance Theory In Government Press Conference Interpretation

This thesis is written on the basis of Relevance Theory which was proposed by Sperber and Wilson. Taking the interpreting of2012Premier Wen’s Press Conference as an example, the author intends to study the application of Relevance Theory in the interpreting of government press conference. Under the theoretical framework of Relevance Theory, the process of interpreting is a double ostensive-inferential process which involves the speaker, the interpreter and the audience. On one hand, the interpreter should analyze the utterance of the speaker to infer his or her communicative intention. On the other hand, the interpreter should consider the cognitive environment of the audience to manifest the information to the audience. Furthermore, because of the seriousness of the government press conference, the interpreter has to bear huge pressure. The effectiveness of the interpreting is an essentially indispensible part of a successful government press conference. The relevance theory has strong explanatory power for interpreting, and has important significance for government press conference. So, in order to complete the interpreting task of government press conference successfully, the interpreter can search for the optimal relevance between the speaker’s utterance and the contextual assumptions, and use proper strategies to interpret the utterance of the speaker to the audience under the guidance of relevance theory. Thus, the audience can get the intention of the speaker easily. The paper studies the interpreting of government press conference from the perspective of cognitive pragmatics, so it will be of a certain theoretical significance and practical value for the interdisciplinary development of interpreting research.