Consecutive Interpreting—from The Perspective Of Cooperative Principle

As globalization deepens, China enjoys more and more exchanges with the rest of the world. As a result, consecutive interpretation as a way to facilitate communication is found in almost all kinds of international communication and exchanges.Recent years witnessed an increasing interest in interpretation research from a number of perspectives. In1967, H. P. Grice proposed the Cooperative Principle as a guiding principle for daily conversation. Over the years, some researchers have cited the principle as a new perspective to study consecutive interpretation, since interpretation is believed to be a special type of conversation and conversational participants are expected to abide by the Cooperative Principle. However, in real-setting conversations, people sometimes violate the Cooperative Principle, where the Conversational Implicature or implied meanings occur as defined by H.P. Grice. Thus, during the process of consecutive interpreting, the interpreter has to adopt some strategies to deliver the implied meanings. This thesis attempts to explore how the Cooperative Principle guides the consecutive interpretation. Some coping strategies are also proposed towards the end to better deliver the Conversational Implicature.The thesis consists of four main parts: The first part deals with the Cooperative Principle and its conversational implicature. The four maxims of the Cooperative Principle, violation of the four maxims and conversational implicature are examined.The second part is devoted to the definition, the process, characteristics of consecutive interpretation, and roles of the interpreters in consecutive Interpretation.In the third part, the communication process in interpretation and the relationship between consecutive interpreting and the Cooperative Principle is elaborated.The fourth part probes into how the Cooperative Principle guides the consecutive interpretation. For example, the interpreter can regard the four maxims as standards to guarantee the quality of his interpretation; it is proposed that consecutive interpretation should abide by the Cooperative Principle since it is a special form of conversation; the interpreter needs different coping strategies when the Cooperative Principle is observed or violated. The fourth part also includes the requirements for an interpreter inspired by the Cooperative Principle.