Article published In:
TargetVol. 17:2 (2005) ► pp.203–226
Who is ‘you’?
Polite forms of address and ambiguous participant roles in court interpreting
This paper investigates the use of forms of address by court interpreters, combining a participation framework approach to dialogue interpreting with a sociolinguistic analysis of intra-speaker variation. Based on transcripts from interpreter-mediated court proceedings in New York City, the paper explores how interpreters respond when the participant status of their target recipients changes from addressee to unaddressed overhearer. The interpreters are found to design their utterances primarily to conform to institutional norms and not to the expectations of target recipients, who rely on politeness features as cues for their participant status. Adding to recent research on discourse processes in dialogue interpreting, the paper explores how the interpreter’s task becomes more complex when more than two primary participants are present.
Keywords: dialogue interpreting, court interpreting, pragmatics, forms of address, politeness, T/V-distinction, sociolinguistics, variation
Article outline
- Introduction
- The participation framework of interpreting
- Structural ambiguity in hearer roles
- Politeness as a cue for participant status
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
-
References
References (38)
Angermeyer, Philipp Sebastian. 2006. ‘Speak English or what?’: Codeswitching and interpreter use in New York City Small Claims Court. New York University. [Ph.D. Dissertation]
Bell, Allan. 1984. “Language style as audience design”. Language in society 131. 145–204. 
Berk-Seligson, Susan. 1990. The bilingual courtroom: Court interpreters in the judicial process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Brown, Penelope and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, Roger and Albert Gilman. 1960. “The pronouns of power and solidarity”. Thomas A. Sebeok, ed. Style in language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1960. 253–276.
Cedergren, Henrietta J. and David Sankoff. 1974. “Variable rules: Performance as a statistical reflection of competence”. Language 50:2. 333–355.
Clark, Herbert H.. 1992. Arenas of language use. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
. 1996. Using language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Conley, John M. and William M. O’Barr 1990. Rules versus relationships: The ethnography of legal discourse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Davidson, Brad. 2002. “A model of the construction of conversational common ground in interpreted discourse”. Journal of pragmatics 341. 1273–1300.
Ervin-Tripp, Susan M. 1972. “On sociolinguistic rules: Alternation and co-occurrence”. John J. Gumperz and Dell Hymes, eds. Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1972. 213–250.
Giles, Howard, Nikolas Coupland and Justine Coupland. 1991. “Accommodation theory: Communication, context, and consequence”. Howard Giles, Justine Coupland and Nikolas Coupland, eds. Contexts of accommodation: Developments in applied sociolinguistics. Cambridge/Paris: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme/Cambridge University Press, 1991. 1–68.
Goffman, Erving. 1955. “On face-work: An analysis of ritual elements in social interaction”. Psychiatry: Journal for the study of interpersonal processes 181. 213–232.
. 1981. Forms of talk. Oxford/Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Hale, Sandra. 2004. The discourse of court interpreting: Discourse practices of the law, the witness and the interpreter. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Harris, Brian. 1990. “Norms in interpretation”. Target 21. 115–119.
Hatim, Basil and Ian Mason. 1997. The translator as communicator. London: Routledge.
Hymes, Dell. 1972. “Models of interaction of language and social life”. John J. Gumperz and Dell Hymes, eds. Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1972. 35–71.
Inghilleri, Moira. 2003. “Habitus, field and discourse: Interpreting as a socially situated activity”. Target 151. 243–268.
Jacobsen, Bente. 2002. Pragmatic meaning in court interpreting: An empirical study of additions in consecutively interpreted question–answer dialogues. Department of English, Århus School of Business. [Ph.D. Dissertation.]
Jakubowska, Ewa. 1999. Cross-cultural dimensions of politeness in the case of Polish and English. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego.
Kadric, Mira. 2001. Dolmetschen bei Gericht: Erwartungen, Anforderungen, Kompetenzen. Vienna: WUV, Universitätsverlag.
Knapp, Karlfried and Annelie Knapp-Potthoff. 1985. “Sprachmittlertätigkeit in der interkulturellen Kommunikation”. Jochen Rehbein, ed. Interkulturelle Kommunikation. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1985. 450–463.
Labov, William. 1969. “Contraction, deletion, and inherent variability of the English copula”. Language 45:4. 715–762.
. 1972. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Mason, Ian. 1999. “Introduction”. The translator 51. 147–160.
, ed. 2002. Triadic exchanges: Studies in dialogue interpreting. Manchester: St. Jerome.
Metzger, Melanie. 1999. Sign language interpreting: Deconstructing the myth of neutrality. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press.
Pöchhacker, Franz. 2004. Introducing interpreting studies. London: Routledge.
Queen, Robin. 2004. “’Du hast jar keene Ahnung’: African American English dubbed into German”. Journal of sociolinguistics 8:4. 515–537.
Roy, Cynthia. 2000. Interpreting as a discourse process. New York: Oxford University Press.
Stone, Gerald. 1981. “Pronominal address in Polish”. International journal of Slavic linguistics and poetics 231. 55–76.
Toury, Gideon. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and beyond. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Valdés, Guadelupe. 2003. Expanding definitions of giftedness: The case of young interpreters from immigrant communities. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Valdés, Guadelupe, Heather Brookes and Christina Chávez. 2003. “Bilinguals and bilingualism”. Guadelupe Valdés, ed. Expanding definitions of giftedness: The case of young interpreters from immigrant communities. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003. 25–61.
Wadensjö, Cecilia. 1998. Interpreting as interaction. London/New York: Longman.
. 2004. “Dialogue interpreting: A monologising practice in a dialogically organised world”. Target 16:1105–124.
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1985. “Different cultures, different languages, different speech acts: Polish vs. English”. Journal of pragmatics 91. 145–178.
Cited by (23)
Cited by 23 other publications
Du, Biyu Jade
2024. How interpreting influences defendants’ participation: a discursive study of zero renditions and non-renditions in court interpreting. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2024:286 ► pp. 185 ff. 
Dayter, Daria, Miriam A. Locher & Thomas C. Messerli
2023. Pragmatics in Translation,
Samha, Fatima, Ahmad S. Haider & Riyad F. Hussein
2023. Address forms in Egyptian vernacular and their English equivalence: A translation-oriented study. Ampersand 10 ► pp. 100117 ff.
Bączkowska, Anna
2022. Forms of Address in Polish Nonprofessional Subtitles. In Language Use, Education, and Professional Contexts [Second Language Learning and Teaching, ], ► pp. 71 ff.
Mapson, Rachel & George Major
2021. Interpreters, rapport, and the role of familiarity. Journal of Pragmatics 176 ► pp. 63 ff.
Yuan, Xiaohui
2021. Reconceptualising the interpreter’s role. FORUM. Revue internationale d’interprétation et de traduction / International Journal of Interpretation and Translation 19:1 ► pp. 83 ff.
Craft, Justin T., Kelly E. Wright, Rachel Elizabeth Weissler & Robin M. Queen
2020. Language and Discrimination: Generating Meaning, Perceiving Identities, and Discriminating Outcomes. Annual Review of Linguistics 6:1 ► pp. 389 ff.
Mapson, Rachel
2020. Intercultural (Im)politeness. In Politeness in Professional Contexts [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 311], ► pp. 151 ff.
Martínez-Gómez, Aída
Ng, Eva N.S. & Ineke H.M. Crezee
2020. Interpreting in legal and healthcare settings. In Interpreting in legal and healthcare settings [Benjamins Translation Library, 151], ► pp. 1 ff.
Kluge, Bettina
2019. On translating pronominal and nominal terms of address. In It’s not all aboutyou [Topics in Address Research, 1], ► pp. 48 ff.
Guo, Yijun
2018. Effects of the interpreter’s political awareness on pronoun shifts in political interviews. Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation 64:4 ► pp. 528 ff.
Defrancq, Bart & Sofie Verliefde
2017. Interpreter-mediated “paternalistic” interaction in a judge-centered courtroom. Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting 19:2 ► pp. 209 ff.
Stephanie, Feyne
2017. Variation in perception of the identity of interpreted Deaf lecturers. In Interpreting and the Politics of Recognition, ► pp. 119 ff.
Lee, Jieun
2015. Evaluation of court interpreting. Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting 17:2 ► pp. 167 ff.
Licoppe, Christian & Maud Verdier
2015. L’interprétariat par visioconférence au sein des chambres de l’instruction en France : une étude conversationnelle de l’activité d’interprétariat dans un dispositif interactionnel médiatisé. Langage et société N° 153:3 ► pp. 109 ff.
Bowe, Heather, Kylie Martin & Howard Manns
2014. Communication across Cultures,
Warchał, Krystyna, Andrzej łyda & Alina Jackiewicz
2012. Whose Face? Us and them in English – Polish Consecutive Interpreting. Meta 56:4 ► pp. 775 ff.
Angermeyer, Philipp Sebastian
2009. Translation style and participant roles in court interpreting1. Journal of Sociolinguistics 13:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
Angermeyer, Philipp Sebastian
2014. Monolingual ideologies and multilingual practices in small claims court: the case of Spanish-speaking arbitrators. International Journal of Multilingualism 11:4 ► pp. 430 ff.
Christensen, Tina Paulsen
2008. Why Judges Deviate from Direct Speech in Interpreter-mediated Court Settings. FORUM. Revue internationale d’interprétation et de traduction / International Journal of Interpretation and Translation 6:2 ► pp. 143 ff.
[no author supplied]
2014. Negotiating Identities in the European Parliament: The Role of Simultaneous Interpreting. In Text and Context, ► pp. 123 ff.
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 december 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.