A multi-dimensional analysis of interpreted and non-interpreted English discourses at Chinese and American government press conferences

Abstract

Abstract This study uses a multidimensional analysis (MDA) proposed by Douglas Biber to investigate the difference in communicative functions between the interpreted and non-interpreted political discourses, based on a comparable corpus of English interpretations of Chinese government press conferences and original English of U.S. government press conferences. The findings show that MDA distinguishes the interpreted from the non-interpreted discourse along several communicative dimensions and that the former is just as persuasive as the latter but has a higher information density and yet a lower degree of involvement, more non-narrative content, higher reference clarity, more abstract information, and a slightly lower degree of information elaboration. These differences can be explained by the nature of the interpretation of government press conferences as an institutional discourse, the interpreting norms, the interpreters’ professional habitus, as well as the working and broadcasting modes of consecutive interpretations in a political setting. MDA used in this study proves its effectiveness in identifying the differences in stylistics and discourse functions between the interpreted and non-interpreted discourse in similar communicative contexts and settings.