C-E Consecutive Interpretation Of Fuzziness In Chinese Government Press Conferences From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

The Chinese government press conference (CGPC) serves as a significant platform for others to have a better and overall understanding of both the government and citizens of China. During the process, language conveyed in CGPCs is smart and well-turned in that it concerns the position and interests of related nations, while on those occasions, fuzziness, as an inherent property of natural language plays an irreplaceable role in improving efficiency, relieving strained relations, indicating attitude, safeguarding interests, and withholding information, etc, making the language more flexible, euphemistic, implicit and polite and being able to show respects, tolerance and avoid conflicts in diplomacy, etc.Therefore, proper interpretation of fuzziness is indispensable to achieve an effective communication on diplomatic CGPCs occasions. Moreover, fuzzy expressions in CGPCs are usually uttered by Chinese spokesmen whose expressions are in line with Chinese conventions and customs and sometimes are attached with strong Chinese characteristics as well as ancient stories. And successful C-E consecutive interpretation plays its role in bridging cultural gap in intercultural communications. Daniel Gile’s effort model of consecutive interpretation is proposed from the cognitive perspective."Various phases of the interpreting process are in need of efforts,"(Gile, D.1995) and fuzziness interpretation in CGPCs tends to be confronted with challenges not only because of its vagueness and flexibility features but also for the distinctive contextual assumptions and backgrounds shared by participants from various countries. This thesis focuses on C-E interpretation of fuzzy expressions in CGPCs which requires appropriate tactics and skills.Sperber&Wilson (2001) proposed Relevance Theory which defines interpretation as a communication that contains two ostensive-inferential processes during which sufficient contextual effects can be generated for audiences with least processing efforts and optimal relevance is achieved in the successful communication. The speaker tends to do ostensive part, while the hearer infers from the speech that is ostensive with the least processing effort. Optimal Relevance can be accessed through the balance between adequate positive cognitive effect and least processing effort. Cognitive principle argues that human cognition actually has the initiative to maximize the relevance automatically while communicative principle in Relevance Theory holds that between the two (the speaker and the audience), there is a mutual manifestation which seems to be originated from human psychology. Context as a set of premises contains three information entries which are lexical, logical and encyclopedic and to facilitate a better communication, interpreters are obliged to enlarge the context as much as possible.Under the relevance-theoretic framework, the tentative study on fuzziness in CGPCs is carried out on lexical and syntactical levels with numerous examples taken from CGPCs and five classifications are derived out based on the two levels, among which the former refer to hedges, fuzzy words and deixis while the latter means negative structure and resemblance respectively. Qualitative and quantitative analytic approaches serve as guidance in dada analysis with elaborately listed conference information in table and detailed examples extracted from representative CGPCs of recent ten years. Furthermore, the distributions of tentative five classifications of fuzziness in CGPCs are presented in figures with specific percentages, which vividly reveal us general pictures of the studying corpus. Typical fuzzy language cases chosen from CGPCs are analyzed at length as for the special functionalities, basis and features of five distinctive fuzziness forms in CGPCs and their proposed corresponding C-E consecutive interpretation strategies are explicitly illustrated with embedded case studies and detailed exploration under the framework of Relevance Theory."Fuzziness to fuzziness" and "fuzziness to clearness" approaches are foreshadowed as two efficient interpreting strategies subsequently, among which the former is practical for classifications of hedges, deixis, negative structures, as well as fuzzy words and resemblances that share mutual contextual assumptions with original language speakers while the latter is applicable for certain amount of fuzzy words and resemblances on special occasions when function-equivalent correspondences are absent in target audiences’contexts. By flexibly employing the coping strategies under the guidance of Relevance Theory, interpreters can adjust their working methods to achieve better communicative effects. Moreover, interpreters can be well prepared by predicting fuzzy categories and interpreting strategies once acquainting involved issues and spokesman’s language habits in CGPCs as demonstrated in various frequency charts and comparison figures in the thesis. Hopefully, this thesis will facilitate high quality interpretations and will be of practical value to attract more researchers to pursue related further studies.