A Study On Rhetorical Expressions In Witty Talk From Zhu Guangquan And His Sign Language Interpreter

Rhetoric is the modification and adjustment of language.Reasonable use of rhetoric can make the expression of language concrete and enhance its effect.Zhu Guangquan,the host of Focus On,has a humorous hosting style.In the broadcast process,he often improvises and uses rhetoric to create various "jokes".This has wined the attention and love from the audience.However,it is more difficult for a sign language interpreter to translate a joke than a normal sentence because of the language and culture behind it.This thesis analyzes rhetorical devices used by Zhu Guangquan and his sign language interpreters,as well as the quality of sign language interpretations.The findings are as follows.First of all,there are a large number of rhetorical devices used in Zhu Guangquan’s jokes,especially rhymes and parody,which account for 53.3% and 21.6%,respectively.This thesis argues that the use of rhetoric on the one hand belongs to host’s personal language styles,on the other hand,provides a new path on how to improve and innovate TV news programs in the new media environment.Secondly,the rhetorical methods used in sign language by sign language interpreters include repetition,coinage and metaphor.There are great differences between spoken language and sign language in the types of rhetoric devices and the ways of expressions.The main reason is that as a visual language,sign language is represented by hand shape,location and movement of hands,and non-manual features among other parameters,which are different from vowels and consonants in spoken speech.Finally,by comparing the spoken content of Zhu guangquan’s jokes with sign languages used by sign language interpreters,this thesis showed a poor quality of the sign language interpretation of the jokes.To be specific,10% of the signs were seriously omitted,and 72% of the signs were not fully interpreted.Also,this thesis further classifies the methods of translation into literal translation and free translation.According to the analysis,this thesis holds that the main reasons for the poor interpretation quality of sign languages are due to the unique expression form of sign language.This thesis also puts forward suggestions on how to translate sign languages in TV news programs.This thesis also believes that,though to listen to the audience,the use of the rhetoric could make the content of the report more plumper,but these jokes brought extra difficulties to sign language interpreters.With a limited time,sign language interpreters should convey a more complete and accurate information,especially the integrity of the meaning as far as possible to the deaf audience.From this perspective,rhetoric of speech themselves are not important.In summary,this thesis makes a comparative analysis on rhetorical devices of Zhu Guangquan’s jokes and the corresponding sign language interpretations,which to some extent can provide reference and inspiration for the improvement and innovation of sign language TV programs.