Pragmatic Functions And Coping Tactics Of Fuzziness In C-E Diplomatic Interpreting

This thesis analyzes major functions of fuzziness in diplomatic interpreting and the coping tactics from a pragmatic point of view.The study is based on previous research on several fields,including fuzzy linguistics,pragmatics and interpreting practice.It is found that pragmatics has great significance in guiding cross-cultural communications.Diplomatic interpreting,which is a typical cross-cultural communications activity,is closely related to pragmatics.Fuzziness exists widely in diplomatic language,thus it can be studied from a pragmatic view.The press conference held by the premier,with the involvement of both Chinese and foreign press,is a typical diplomatic activity.This research has selected Premier Li Keqiang's press conferences during the Two Sessions(the NPC and CPPCC)in 2013,2014 and 2015 as corpus.By an in-depth study on the collected corpus,firstly the author summarizes the three major types of fuzziness in diplomatic interpreting,i.e.semantic fuzziness,rhetorical fuzziness,and cultural fuzziness,and uses abundant examples to illustrate based on the working definition of fuzziness in this thesis.Based on the research result of this part,the author continues to analyze the pragmatic functions of fuzziness and found them to be six-fold.Firstly,fuzziness can help maintain politeness and a euphemistic tone,which is supported by Leech's Politeness Principle.Secondly,fuzziness can cover or make up the lack of adequate information or knowledge.Thirdly,by giving just the right amount of information and leaving space for maneuvers,fuzziness can protect the speaker.Fourthly,fuzziness enhances the flexibility and vividness of diplomatic language.Fifthly,fuzziness promotes the efficiency of expression.Sixthly,fuzziness can emphasize the tone or attitude of the speaker.Because of the above pragmatic functions of fuzziness in diplomatic language,interpreters are supposed to be clear of the speaker's communicative intention and purposes,and reproduce it properly with the target language.By a further study on the coping tactics of diplomatic interpreters,the author finds out that interpreters tend to either use literal interpreting,substitution,conversion to maintain the fuzziness,or turn fuzzy information into precise information by addition,omission,explanation or paraphrase.Through a further quantitative research on tactics adopted to interpret fuzzy language of different pragmatic functions,the author finds that emphasis is the commonest type of pragmatic functions in diplomatic interpreting and literal interpreting is most widely applied.