A Descriptive Analysis Of Guide-interpretation From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

In recent years, international tourism has been developing rapidly. The professionalism of the guide-interpreter, however, fails to keep up with the same pace, which results in hindrance to an overall development of tourism industry. The problem is so serious and urgent that it has aroused concerns from an increasing number of scholars. They have proposed various Countermeasures from different perspectives. These Countermeasures tend to focus on the guide-interpreter's language skills and intercultural communication competence. The guide-interpreter's cognition has been rarely touched upon. As an act of intercultural communication involving the guide-interpreter's cognition, guide-interpretation is considered to be subject to his cognition to lead to effective communication as expected. Actually, the guide-interpreter's language skills and intercultural communication competence are the results and extension of his cognition. Relevance Theory proposed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson has been considered as the basis for cognitive pragmatics. It provides a solid foundation for studies on the guide-interpreter's cognition in the guide-interpretation process.According to Relevance Theory, communication is regarded as an ostensive-inferential process, in which the cognition of both the communicator and the audience is guided by a same target, the optimal relevance. Therefore, the communicator should take the audience's cognitive environment into account and express his utterance in a way that the utterance will be relevant enough to be worth the audience's effort to process it. Besides, the communicator should try to achieve relevance to the greatest degree whenever he is able to and willing to. Meanwhile, in utterance interpretation, the audience is always entitled to achieve adequate contextual effects without spending unnecessary effort since every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance. Therefore, in order to bring about successful communication, the audience is supposed to use the communicator-envisaged contextual assumptions to achieve the contextual effects expected by the communicator and finally recognize the communicator's communicative intention. The principle of relevance can give a direction for the guide-interpreter's cognition. That is, seeking optimal relevance.Since guide-interpretation includes not only commentaries production but also interpretation in its regular sense, Ernst-August Gutt's relevance translation theory is applied to this thesis. The theory holds that translation (or interpretation) is presumed to resemble the original closely enough in relevant aspects and have adequate contextual effects without gratuitous processing effort. This criterion provides a new perspective to studies on translation and interpretation.This thesis is organized around six chapters:Chapter One is a brief introduction to the motivations, the objectives and the methodology of this thesis.Chapter Two first provides the definitions of two terms "guide-interpreter" and "guide-interpretation". The vital role the guide-interpreter plays in intercultural communication is emphasized and guide-interpretation is classified into commentaries production and interpretation in its regular sense. A literature review of relevant studies on guide-interpretation and the guide-interpreter is also provided. The literature review reveals that there are still some problems open for further improvement in this field. Reviewing these problems, the author further explains the reasons for choosing Relevance Theory as the theoretical framework for guide-interpretation in this thesis.Chapter Three is an introduction to Relevance Theory. A literature review is firstly provided followed by explanation of some basic concepts, including code model and inferential model in communication, ostensive-inferential nature of communication, cognitive environment and mutual manifestness, relevance and the principle of relevance.Chapter Four is directed at data collection and is presented in seven aspects, namely, the source of data, a brief introduction to Sanxingdui Museum, the two versions of guide-interpretation recorded in Sanxingdui Museum, the representativeness of data, data reduction and limitations of data.Chapter Five is a comprehensive analysis of guide-interpretation from the perspective of Relevance Theory. It firstly provides an objective assessment of the widespread criticism leveled at guide-interpreters that they are simply "reciters" of the pre-translated commentaries. Then, the guide-interpreter's cognition during the process of producing commentaries and interpretation in its regular sense is explored separately. The chapter concludes by recognizing that in the case of commentaries production, the guide-interpreter's cognition is always governed by achieving the optimal relevance. In other words, to produce commentaries in a way that adequate contextual effects to the tourists at their minimal processing effort will be achieved. In contrast, in the case of interpretation in its regular sense, the objective of the guide-interpreter's cognition is to transfer the optimal relevance.Chapter Six is a conclusion of this thesis. It summarizes the major findings of the present study, points out its limitations which are still open to question and offers suggestions for further research.