Cognitive Context And Interpretation

The birth of interpretation is a result of a strong need for communication between people speaking different languages. With China's entry into WTO, international communication appears to be very necessary and urgent. The demand for a large number of highly qualified interpreters is increasing greatly, and accordingly research on interpretation has gained more and more attention.Interpretation, as a communicative activity, only takes place in the special context. Due to its extemporariness,it is more dependent on the context.Without context, there will be no good understanding of the original language and no output of the target language. But traditional context or static context mainly emphasizes the functions of the external world from the static angle and ignores the subjective initiative of people in communication. Cognitive context or"dynamic context"put forward by Sperber & Wilson is a psychological construct made up of a series of assumptions that have to be chosen with progress of communication by searching for the relevance, which can explain the mental activities of human beings in communication. Between these two kinds of contexts, they are not completely opposite to each other. Some of elements in static context, such as setting, situation etc. are included in cognitive context. The role of static context in interpretation has been explored, while there are very few studies on how cognitive context affects interpretation. Since understanding of utterance mainly relies on information in cognitive context and cognitive competence of human beings, the focus will be centered on the role of cognitive context in interpretation. It is hoped that a research into this field will be a supplement to the previous studies and provide a keen insight into the interpretation research, and that it can be revelatory to the interpretation researchers and practitioners.By exploring the history and present situation of interpretation research, based on an analysis of the nature of interpretation as a way of communication and providing a full view of context and analysis of both static context and cognitive context,this...