On The Representations Of Discourse Marker "jiushi" In C-e Consecutive Interpreting In View Of Cognitive Context Of Relevance Theory

Relevance Theory mainly studies communication as an ostensive-inferential process and assumes that the key to its success is based on the manifest and mutual manifest of cognitive context between parties in the communication. Consecutive interpreting, however, can be understood as two stages of an ostensive-inferential process. That is to say, in order to reach successful communication, the mediator interpreter firstly should ensure the mutual manifest of cognitive context with the speaker, and then he or she can do interpreting. In the original texts, the speaker uses some devices to manifest the cognitive context, among which discourse marker is one of them. With the use of discourse markers, the speaker organizes and constructs the cognitive context. Then, if the interpreter has a better recognition of discourse markers, he or she can ensure the sharing of the speaker's cognitive context. However, the purpose of consecutive interpreting is to realize the communication between the speaker and the hearer. That means the interpreter has to represent these discourse markers in view of cognitive context. Only in this way can the speaker and the hearer ensure the mutual manifest of cognitive context. Based on the analysis of the collected materials of press conferences, this paper is going to investigate how the cognitive context determines the interpreter's representations of Chinese discourse marker"jiushi".Firstly, an overall view of studies on consecutive interpreting from the perspective of Relevance Theory and on discourse markers in consecutive interpreting will be made respectively. Then, the cognitive context in the representations of discourse markers in consecutive interpreting will be introduced. Secondly, the distribution of"jiushi"in the original texts is examined and three functions of it in cognitive context construction are concluded. Then, the relationship between"jiushi"and cognitive context is discussed. Thirdly, the representations of"jiushi"in consecutive interpreting are studied and it is found that there are generally three ways of representing"jiushi". Meanwhile, the reason why the interpreter represents it in different ways is investigated. After detailed analysis and discussion, it is found that the overlapping of cognitive context between participants is the determining factor of representing"jiushi". Lastly, conclusion is reached that most of time the interpreter can have an appropriate treatment of discourse markers in Chinese-English consecutive interpreting when they realize the importance of cognitive context in representing discourse markers. Besides, some suggestions on how to translate discourse markers as well as limitation of the present study and implication for the future study are given.