Understanding Comprehension In Interpretation: A Relevance Theory Perspective

This dissertation is designed to analyze the listening comprehension ininterpretation from the perspective of relevance theory．To some extent,theinterpreting process can be divided into two phases,which are comprehension andComprehension is the primary step in the process of interpretation,andit decides the quality of the whole task．Therefore,the author decides to focus on thefirst step of listening comprehension in this dissertation by putting aside thereproduction phase without discussion．The study on the listening comprehension has been undertaken from differentperspectives．But relevance theoretic approach must be a relatively pioneering one inthe study of listening comprehension．It provides a cognitive perspective to makeanalysis on this field,which systematically expounds the theme from academic levelto practical utilization．In 1986 Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson proposed Relevance Theory,whichtakes the view that communication is an ostensive-inferential process．The speakermanifests an ostensive stimulus to the hearer for showing his intensions；then thehearer infers the informative and communication intensions not only through the newinformation,but more essentially through the common context with the speaker,which is the most important factor in the ostensive—inferential communication．AsSperber and Wilson defined that context is understood as the set of premises used ininterpreting an utterance．It is a psychological notion,and more precisely,it refers to apart of the cognitive environment of the hearer．Based on the relevance theory,thecommunication between the speaker and hearer always adheres to the principle thatthey Can achieve the only optimal relevance,which is considered to be the principle ofrelevance．How Can they say they have got the optimal relevance?Gutt posted theopinion that relevance should be seen as the cost-benefit relation of processing effortspent versus contextual effects obtained．That is to say,optimal relevance will yieldadequate contextual effects,without requiring unnecessary processing effortThrough discussing from the relevance-theoretic perspective,the dissertation proves that interpretation can be considered to be a special form of communication,asit also holds the feature of ostension-inference．However,differing from in the normalcommunication,the speaker and the target audience cannot achieve the directcommunication in interpretation．It is safe to say that the interpreter plays anirreplaceable role,as he is the mediator between the two parties of the communication．This dissertation is composed from the viewpoint of an interpreter as a listener to thesource language speech．During the whole process of interpreting,it is difficult toachieve the identical cognitive environment as in the common communication．Therefore,in order to guarantee the efficiency and the quality of the task,theinterpreter has to seek for the relevance as close as possible to the source languagetext through inferring the ostensive stimulus in the source language utterances,as wellas the contextual assumptions．As listening comprehension holds a unique position ininterpretation,it Can be considered to be the start point for the whole task and also thefirst lesson for the new learners．Various questions are discussed in the dissertation,as what to comprehend,howto comprehend,problems resulting from the lack of relevance,as well as the practicalpreparations before taking up a real interpreting task,SO as to provide a clue for thenew learners．...