On Interpreter-Mediated Legal Discourse From The Perspective Of Persuasion Modes In Rhetoric

This thesis mainly studies interpreter-mediated legal discourse,in which a research was conducted on court interpreting from a relatively new perspective,namely,three persuasion modes in rhetoric.How to convince and persuade judges and people's juries in court is of great significance in a trial,which directly affects the result.Therefore,if speakers employ rhetorical devices in their utterance,their credibility would be enhanced.In bilingual courts,the interpreting of legal discourse involving rhetorical devices exerts a great influence,but in general,also poses various challenges to court interpreters.Only a handful of academic studies were conducted on the use of rhetorical devices in legal discourse.Therefore,the author hopes to answer the following questions related to persuasion modes in legal discourse through a corpus-based study: first,what interpreting techniques are frequently adopted by court interpreters to interpret legal discourse involving rhetorical devices? Second,how are the performances of court interpreters when they interpret legal discourse involving rhetorical devices? Third,why do court interpreters employ some techniques to interpret legal discourse involving rhetorical devices?The hypothesis of this study is that in many cases,court interpreters fail in conveying the credibility and underlying intention of source discourse involving rhetorical devices for various reasons.This thesis indicates that three persuasion modes in rhetoric afford a valid framework for analysis of interpreter-mediated legal discourse.Interpreting techniques such as compression,explanation,summarizing,simplification etc,are frequently used by court interpreters when dealing with legal discourse involving rhetorical devices.Nonetheless,in many cases,court interpreters fail in delivering the real intentions of speakers in court because they ignored the rhetorical devices employed by speakers in their legal discourse.There are some techniques that can be used to improve interpreting of legal discourse involving rhetorical devices.