Abstract:
The rendition of political speeches and political interpreting usually involves the employment of high-level pragmatic competence. In this regard, the appropriate use and rendition of contrastive markers (CMs), i.e. the linguistic indicator that may signal propositions unfavourable or contrastive to people’s presuppositions, form part of an important pragmatic strategy. Nevertheless, little empirical evidence has been provided as to how CMs are and should be rendered in political speeches and their interpreting. This study, therefore, aims to investigate and compare the employment of two frequently used CMs, however and but, in interpreted and non-interpreted policy speeches in English. Datasets in the Chinese/English Political Interpreting Corpus (CEPIC), consisting of speeches delivered by top government officials in or interpreted into English, were employed for the purpose of the study. Findings of the study suggest that the use of the two CMs display different patterns in interpreter speeches and politician speeches, and in speeches delivered in a monologue mode and a dialogue mode. The pragmatic implications and possible triggers were further explored through examining the top collocates of the CMs. Findings of the study shed new light on issues relating to representativeness and sanction, or authority and acceptability of political speeches.

Biography:

Jun Pan works as Associate Dean (Research) of the Faculty of Arts, and Associate Head and Associate Professor of the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. Her other roles include co-editor of Bandung: Journal of the Global South (Brill) and review editor of The Interpreter and Translator Trainer (Taylor & Francis). She is also President of the Hong Kong Translation Society and Founder of Enter-Link. Dr. Pan’s research interests lie in corpus-based interpreting/translation studies, political discourse and translation/interpreting, learner factors in interpreter training, and professionalism in interpreting.