The Application Of Cooperative Principle In Conference Interpretation

Interpretation has a long history in human’s communication, but conferenceinterpretation was not adopted by people until1919in Paris Peace Conference. Asconference interpretation takes more and more important role in internationalexchanges, some experts and scholars have made an interdisciplinary research on it.The Cooperative Principle was put forward by Grice in his lecture at Harvard in1967. In his opinion, during the process of communication, the two participants of thecommunication seem to obey some rules in order to accomplish communicationefficiently. Now, it has become an important daily communication principle.Conference interpretation is a kind of special communicative activity, so theCooperative Principle should also be guidance for it.The thesis aims at studying the application of Cooperative Principle viaanalyzing the interpretation at foreign minister Yang Jiechi’s Press Conference. Thisthesis is divided into three chapters. In Chapter one, the author gives someinformation about Grice’s Cooperative Principle and its four maxims includingquantity maxim, quality maxim, relation maxim and manner maxim. It also introducesthe significance of Cooperative Principle in interpretation. Chapter two summarizesthe materials of case study including its background and characteristics. Chapter threemakes an analysis of the materials based on Cooperative Principle. The authordiscusses it from observance and violation of the principle and puts forward sometactics. At last, the author gives a conclusion that the Cooperative Principle is of greatimportance in conference interpretation and interpreters should choose differenttactics according to different situations so as to accomplish the interpretationsuccessfully.