On The Necessary Violation Of The Cooperative Principle In Interpretation

As China's internationalization is increasing, interpretation plays an important role in the communicative activities. Interpreting studies with a long history is a relatively new area of research that started only a few decades ago. However, isolated research in interpreting in the past restrained the study from further developing due to lack of objective academic support. Therefore, approaching interpreting studies from an interdisciplinary perspective is becoming more and more important. Nowadays, the research work on interpretation takes on a multidisciplinary trend from the perspective of psychology, cross-cultural communication, pragmatics, etc. Ever since the Cooperative Principle was put forward by Herbert Grice, an American philosopher in the Logic and Conversation --- a part of his William James lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1967, it has been generally viewed as the primary principle in oral communication. In his opinion,"Our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession of disconnected remarks, and would not be rational if they did. They are characteristically, to some degree at least, cooperative efforts; and each participant recognizes in them, to some extent, a common purpose or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction."(Grice, 1989:26) Therefore, the participants must obey the Cooperative Principle and its four maxims so as to ensure the smooth operation of the conversation. Grice's Cooperative Principle not only serves as the fundamental rule guiding the conversational communication, but also can be applied to the interpretation activities.Interpretation is a kind of work with limited time and dense information,under high pressure and is characterized by its unpredictability. Therefore, it demands that the interpreter should have high-level comprehensive qualities including language level, expression competence, analytical and response abilities, mental qualities and professional ethics. Even though interpreters acquire all the qualities mentioned above, they can hardly accomplish a perfect job. During the interpretation process, there will be many surprises and difficulties that interpreters must face and try to tackle. All of these unpredictable circumstances will put more pressure on interpreters'psychology and will affect the quality of their interpreting performance. Therefore, in the interpretation, the interpreters have no other choice but to violate the Cooperative Principle or use some tactics to get more time to reduce the time pressure. Thus violating the Cooperative Principle is but necessary.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 is the introduction that briefly explains the rationale, objective and structure of this study.In Chapter 2, the author provides an introduction to the interpretation such as the types of interpretation, characteristics of interpretation and the important interpreting model: Gile's Effort Models for both consecutive interpretation and simultaneous interpretation.In Chapter 3, the author provides some information about Grice's Cooperative Principle including its conversational implicature and four maxims including the quantity maxim, quality maxim, relation maxim and manner maxim. Chapter 3 also analyzes the contributions and shortcomings of the Cooperative Principle. Through this chapter, one can be familiar with the basic information about the Cooperative Principle and its importance on guiding the daily conversation and the interpretation.Chapter 4 discusses the key role of the Cooperative Principle in guiding the interpretation and the importance of observing the Cooperative Principle in interpretation. And then through analyzing the difficulties interpreters come across in the interpretation, the author discusses the reasons why interpreters violate the four maxims of Cooperative Principle in interpretation, its circumstances and strategies adopted to tackle the difficulties.Chapter 5 is conclusion, which comprises two parts: major findings of the study as well as limitations and suggestions for further research.In a word, the thesis attempts to discuss the reasons why interpreters violate the Cooperative Principle in interpretation through the unique characteristics of interpretation and various surprises and difficulties interpreters meet. In addition, it also tries to illustrate the necessity of violating the Cooperative Principle in interpretation by examples and to treat it as a kind of strategy that will ensure the smooth operation of the interpretation.