Publications
Publication details [#9516]
Pérez Gonzalez, Luís. 2006. Interpreting strategic recontextualization cues in the courtroom: corpus-based insights into the pragmatic force of non-restrictive relative clauses. In Baker, Mona, ed. Translation and context. Special issue of Journal of Pragmatics. An Interdisciplinary Monthly of Language Studies 38 (3): 390–417. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Publication type
Article in Special issue
Publication language
English
Keywords
Edition info
No page numbers
Abstract
In recent decades, studies of the pragmatics of institutional interaction have enhanced the awareness of the ongoingly negotiated nature of context. In this paper, key concepts of the contextualization paradigm, adopted from socio-pragmatics, are outlined and subsequently discussed in the context of courtroom interpreting. Of particular interest is the fact that interpreters are ethically constrained not to alter the pragmatics of the ongoing interaction, which ultimately presupposes their capacity to identify the contextualization cues with which different participants realign themselves as required. The paper focuses on the notion of ‘strategic’ or ‘covert recontextualization cues’, as illustrated by lawyers’ use of non-restrictive relative clauses. Data from two different corpora provide some evidence of the use of these structures as pragmatically consequential devices, thus challenging the commonly held assumption that non-restrictive relative clauses are only used to ‘add information’.
Source : Based on abstract in journal