A Probe Into Interpreting From The Perspective Of Cognitive Context

Interpreting, as a cross-language, cross-culture communicative activity, takes place in a special context. Due to the limitation of the extemporariness in conveying the intention of the speaker, it is more dependent on context for proper rendering of the original message.In the past, scholars tended to approach context from a static angle, emphasizing the functions of the physical environment, including everything ranging from verbal to non-verbal environment, covering factors such as co-text, socio-cultural background, encyclopedia, and specific settings as time, place and situation. In such cases, context is assumed determined and given in advance of comprehension. It ignores the subjective initiative of people in communication. Cognitive context or "dynamic context" put forward by Sperber and Wilson is a new development of traditional context. It has some different characteristics from those of the traditional one. First, it is essentially a psychological construct rather than the physical environment. Second, the range of cognitive context includes some of the elements of the static context, such as setting, situation etc. It is the combination of the traditional context with the physical assumptions, which are projected and formed by the objective surroundings. Third, in the process of communication, cognitive context is characterized by its instaneousness and selectiveness, instead of being a proceeding, given and static concept. Since interpreting is an interactive and dynamic process, and language comprehension and environment are characterized with inconstancy, cognitive context has more explanatory power for interpreting.,The nature of interpreting is a cross-language, cross-culture meaning-transmitting communicative activity. The interpreter plays a mediating role as a "meaning processor" in it. In the process of interpreting, the interpreter is influenced by three intervening effects of cognitive context. First, the cognitive context of the listener of the SL intervenes in the SL speaker. Second, the SL speaker's encoding way intervenes in the interpreter's cognitive context. Third, the TL listener's cognitive context intervenes in the interpreter. The interpreter should attach importance to those intervening effects and develop his/her subjective initiative by selection and adoption of interpreting tactics. That's to say, s/he should on the one hand construct the same cognitive context to fully understand the speaker's ideas; on the other hand, s/he needs to adapt to the listener's cognitive context to make sure the latter will not misunderstand the interpretation. Furthermore, lexical, encyclopedic and logical elements in the cognitive context also play important roles in the acquisition and transmission of meaning and intention. Cognitive context can help the interpreter reveal connotation, infer logic, educe implicated meaning, and predict linguistic and non-linguistic elements in comprehension.After exploring the origin, development and relevant concepts of cognitive context, the paper focuses on the impacts of cognitive context on interpreting from its intervening effects and its four functions. Based on the impacts of cognitive context, the paper highlights the interpreter's subjectivity in the choice and adoption of methods in comprehension and utterance. In conclusion, the paper mentions the significance of conducting research in interpreting from the perspective of cognitive context. Using the deductive method, the paper provides personal examples to prove the argument of the thesis. It is hoped that the new angle of cognitive context under relevance theory can shed a new light on interpreting studies and that it can benefit researchers and practitioners of interpreting as well as the training of interpreters.