A Study On The Processing Of Affective Meaning In Interpreting From The Perspective Of Multimodal Discourse Analysis

Other than appropriate expression,comprehensive communicative ability and the transmission of thematic information,emotion,as a psycho-physiological factor,is usually taken as a noncognitive predictor to research interpreters’ performance.As a factor invariably taking effects on the quality output,how interpreters deal with affective meaning conveyed by speakers might be an important dimension to observe.The study on emotion requires not only analysis on textual messages,but also on such multimodal resources as speech features and gestures in consideration of objectivity.Multimodality in spoken language crucially includes the interaction of the auditory,visual and kinesthetic modalities in explaining and transmitting meanings.Therefore,with the research methods of case study and multimodal discourse analysis,this thesis aims to explore how interpreters express emotions when conveying speaker’s affective meaning during interpreting process.Two questions will be answered in this study: 1)How did the interpreters deal with sentiment words in interpreting? 2)What interpreting strategies did the interpreters use in interpreting in regards to the modals of speech and gesture? How interpreters improve their performance when dealing with affective source texts is also discussed.The study is going to analyze three aspects: sentiment lexicons in texts,speech features and gestures of both speakers and interpreters.According to the research results,it is found that:(1)Literal interpretation,addition and explicitation are the common strategies used by interpreters at sentiment words to transmit affective meaning;(2)At the speech level,the interpreters tried to keep a stable flow and rate overall,but showed stress at some sentiment words;(3)At the gesture level,the interpreters applied fewer gestures with smaller range of motion at sentiment words than the speaker.However,owing to emotion contagion,the interpreters would have similar gestures to the speakers’ ones during interpreting.Multimodal resources,such as gestures and tone of speech,are sometimes used for compensation of literal meaning.In order to perform better in dealing with affective meaning in speeches,interpreters need to first be clear about the speakers’ intention of what they said.During interpreting,interpreter should fully mobilize multimodal resources to transmit affective meaning.In order to achieve interpersonal meaning,audience’s emotional appeal should also be taken into consideration during interpreting.