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
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