Appraisal Meaning Shift In Chinese-English Consecutive Interpreting In Political Discourse

The annual Premier’s press conference during the “Two Sessions” and its consecutive interpreting(CI)is a robust platform for information delivery,communication with the world,and display of the national image.As the interpreter serves as an interlocutor of the dialogue,the interpreting contains many appraisal resources.Influenced by the interpreter’s subjectivity,context,or socio-cultural factors,the interpreter would adopt various interpreting strategies via shifting appraisal resources or adding paralanguage to establish a speaker-listener interpersonal relationship and facilitate communication to strengthen the government’s stance and showcase the national image.Appraisal Theory,as the development of the interpersonal meta-function of Systemic Functional Linguistics,focuses on how interlocutors leverage lexical items in discourse to express attitudes and emotions.Martin and White(2005)proposed attitude,engagement,and graduation systems to analyze appraisal resources and their meanings behind discourse.Based on the Appraisal Theory and with the help of corpus tools,this study analyzed the appraisal meaning shift in Premier Li’s press conference interpreting from 2020 to 2022 with both quantitative and qualitative methods by taking verbal and auditive perspectives in a bid to illustrate the appraisal and interpersonal meanings realized through verbal and auditive modes and to explain the interpreting strategies and motivations behind.Research analysis revealed that:(1)Quantitatively,typical in political discourse interpreting such as Premier’s press conference,appraisal meaning shift was observed in attitude,engagement,and graduation resources from both verbal and auditive perspectives.(2)Quantitative analysis showed that the interpreter attempted to add positive and explicit attitudinal resources and remove negative ones to strengthen the stance,attitude,and determination of the Chinese government;to expand dialogic space to bring the audience closer and form a good interpersonal relationship,achieving effective communication,and add proclaim resources to make the utterance more authoritative and convincing;to scale up force and sharpen focus to emphasize position and present a positive national image;and,to sharpen the tone and add stress to signify consistency and importance.(3)Significant motivations for adopting the above interpreting strategies would be to strengthen interpersonal meaning,achieve a better communicational effect and showcase China’s positive image.With the help of Appraisal Theory,this thesis analyzed the interpreting strategies in achieving appraisal meaning shift from verbal and auditive perspectives,and attempted to provide a new angle for research on appraisal meaning shift in CI of the press conference from not only the verbal perspective but also the auditive one.