Article published In:
BabelVol. 64:4 (2018) ► pp.594–618
Formal ontology for discourse analysis of a corpus of court interpreting
We develop a new method of discourse analysis using speech act theory and formal ontology. The method constitutes
an attempt to make discourse analysis more formal and repeatable. We apply the method to a corpus of bi-lingual, interpreted legal
dialogue, focusing on the speech act of clarification and its component acts. While discourse analysis is primarily a qualitative
tool, it can be applied quantitatively by counting certain types of discourse, such as clarification speech acts. Dialogues are
still analysed, utterances are classified as speech acts and their semantic relationships are qualitatively assessed. Subjectivity
of human analysis is minimised using a new method of discourse analysis that employs a formal ontology. The ontology is stated in
higher-order logic making the annotation of the corpus more objective, formal and repeatable than prior research.
Article outline
- 1.Problem statement
- 2.Prospective applications
- 2.1Translation gap analysis and chunking
- 2.2Objectives
- 2.3Speech act theory
- 2.4Formalizing speech acts
- 3.Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO)
- 4.Conceptual framework
- 4.1Quantifying clarification dialogues in terms of repair turns and speech acts
- 4.1.1Clarification as repairs
- 4.1.2Clarification speech acts
- 4.2Clarification speech acts in SUMO definition
- 4.2.1Speech acts of clarification dialogue
- 4.3Definition of clarification dialogue set
- 4.4Original turn number and splitting turn
- 4.5Speakers of the turn
- 4.6Agent vs patient
- 4.7Language
- 4.8Speech acts
- 5.Pilot study
- 5.1Discussion
- 5.2Special discourse in the courtroom
- 5.3How formalized speech acts help defining clarification dialogues
- 5.4When sorry is not an apology
- 5.5How to handle tacit consent
- 5.6Borderline clarification endeavours
- 5.7Redefine elaborating in SUMO
- 6.Definitions
- 7.Conclusion
-
References
References (36)
References
Angelelli, C. V. 2004. Medical Interpreting and Cross-cultural Communication. Cambridge (NY): CUP.
Austin, J. 1962. How to Do Things With Words. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.
Bond, F.; Fellbaum, C.; Hsieh, S.-K.; Huang, C.-R.; Pease, A.; and Vossen, P. 2014. “A Multilingual Lexico-Semantic Database and Ontology”. In Towards the Multilingual Semantic Web, ed. by P. Buitelaar, and P. Cimiano, 243–258. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
Cohen, P.; and Levesque, H. 1990. “Intention is choice with commitment”. Artificial Intelligence 42 (2–3): 213–361.
de Melo, G.; Suchanek, F.; and Pease, A. 2008. “Integrating YAGO into the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology”. Proceedings of the 20th IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence.
Fairclough, N. C. H. 1995. Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. London: Longman.
Genesereth, M. 1991. “Knowledge interchange format”. In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, ed by Allen, J.; Fikes, R.; and Sandewall, E., 238–249. Burlington (MA): Morgan Kaufmann.
Gile, D. 1999. “Testing the effort models: tightrope hypothesis in simultaneous interpreting: A contribution”. Hermes 231: 153–172.
Hertog, E. 2013. “Legal interpreting”. In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, ed. by Chapelle, C. A., 3274-3281. Hoboken (NJ): Wiley-Blackwell.
Jacobsen, B. 2004. “Pragmatic meaning in court interpreting: An empirical study of additions in consecutively interpreted question-answer dialogues”. Hermes 321: 237–249.
James F. Allen, C. R. P. 1980. “Analyzing intention in utterances”. Artificial Intelligence 15 (3): 143–178.
Jurafsky, D.; and Martin, J. H. 2009. Speech and Language Processing: An Introduction to Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, and Speech Recognition. Upper Saddle River (NJ): Prentice Hall.
Katan, D. 2004. Translating Cultures: An Introduction for Translators, Interpreters, and Mediators. Manchester: St Jerome Publishing.
Kaufman, S. 2006. “The interpreter as intervener”. In The Negotiator’s Fieldbook: The Desk Reference for the Experienced Negotiator. ed. by Schneider, A. K.; and Honeyman, C., 535–546. Chicago (IL): American Bar Association.
Lee, J. 2009a. “Interpreting inexplicit utterances during courtroom examination”. Applied Linguistics 301: 93–114.
Lee, J. 2009b. “When linguistic and cultural differences are not disclosed in court interpreting”. Multilingua 281: 379–401.
Lee, J. 2013. “A study of facework in interpreter-mediated courtroom examination”. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 211: 82–99.
Leung, E. 2005. “From legislation to translation, from translation to interpretation: The narrative of sexual offences”. [URL]
Morris, R. 1995. “The moral dilemmas of court interpreting”. The Translator 1 (1): 25–46.
Nakane, I. 2009. “The myth of an invisible mediator : An Australian case study of English- Japanese police interpreting”. PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies 6 (1): 1–16.
Niles, I.; and Pease, A. 2001. “Toward a Standard Upper Ontology”. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS- 2001), ed. by Welty, C.; and Smith, B., 2–9.
Niles, I.; and Pease, A. 2003. “Linking Lexicons and Ontologies: Mapping Word Net to the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology”. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Information and Knowledge Engineering, 412–416.
Pease, A. 2009. Standard upper ontology knowledge interchange format. [URL]
Pease, A. 2011. Ontology: A Practical Guide. Articulate Software Press. Angwin (CA): Articulate Software Press.
Pease, A.; Sutcliffe, G.; Siegel, N.; and Trac, S. 2010. “Large Theory Reasoning with SUMO at CASC”. AI Communications, Special issue on Practical Aspects of Automated Reasoning 23 (2–3): 137–144.
Reddy, M. J. 1979. “The conduit metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language”. Metaphor and thought: 164–201.
Sacks, H.; Schegloff, E. A.; and Jefferson, G. 1974. “A simplest systematics for the organization of turn taking for conversation”. Language 50 (4): 696–735.
Schegloff, E.; and Sacks, G. J. H. 1977. “The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation”. Language 53 (2): 361–382.
Searle, J. 1969. Speech Acts: an Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge (NY): CUP.
Searle, J.; and Vanderveken, D. 1985. Foundations of illocutionary logic. Cambridge (NY): CUP.
Sutcliffe, G.; and Suttner, C. 2006. “The state of CASC”. AI Communications 19 (1): 35–48.
Yuan, X. (ed.). 2013. Managing language and cultural challenges in cross-border negotiation and deal-making. Hoschton (GA): China Media Research.
Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Li, Ruitian, Kanglong Liu & Andrew K. F. Cheung
2023.
Interpreter visibility in press conferences: a multimodal conversation analysis of speaker–interpreter interactions.
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 10:1
Zhang, Yifan & Andrew K. F. Cheung
2022.
A corpus-based study of modal verbs in Chinese–English governmental press conference interpreting.
Frontiers in Psychology 13
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 31 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.