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Article published In: Translation and Interpreting Studies
Vol. 14:1 (2019) ► pp.1–20

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Interpreters caught up in an ideological tug-of-war?

A CDA and Bakhtinian analysis of interpreters’ ideological positioning and alignment at government press conferences

 | University of Manchester
Published online: 5 April 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.00027.gu
Abstract
The interpreter-mediated Premier-Meets-the-Press Conferences are an institutional(ized) discursive event in China, permitting the Chinese premier to answer a range of potentially challenging and face-threatening questions from journalists. Arguably, this dynamic and interactive setting can be profitably conceptualized using Bakhtin’s notion of dialogized heteroglossia. As additional subjective actors in the triadic communication process, the government-affiliated interpreters are caught up in an ideological tug-of-war between the government and (foreign) journalists. That is, there is often a centripetal force pulling toward Beijing’s official positions and stances (the central, unitary and authoritative) and simultaneously a centrifugal force exerted by (foreign) journalists who pose sensitive and adversarial questions (toward the heteroglossic and peripheral away from the center). Manual CDA on 20 years’ corpus data illustrates the interpreters’ tendency to align with the government’s official positions, soften the journalists’ questions and (re)construct a more desirable image for Beijing.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Toward theorizing political press conference as site of dialogized heteroglossia
  • Interpreters’ location: Negotiation between the centripetal and centrifugal
  • Theoretical framework, data, and methodology
  • Data analysis
  • Discussions and conclusion
  • Note
  • References
References (40)
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