22/11/22 - Vibeke Bø (Oslo Metropolitan University)

Vibeke Bø is a PhD candidate at Oslo Metropolitan University.

Abstract: The complex and interactional character of interpreting is now well established by interpreting scholars (e.g. Wadensjö 1998; Roy 2000; Hale 2004; Mason 2006; Llewellyn-Jones and Lee 2014; Kluuskeri 2019; Gallai 2017; Blakemore and Gallai 2014; Farinde, Alli, and Ademola 2020). However, the nature of this complexity remains unclear, specifically the research on the multimodal pragmatic processes in interpreted discourse is scarce. In this presentation, reporting on my ongoing PhD-project, I explore some of these processes by aligning new insights on the embodiment and multimodality of language from linguistic research and gesture studies with interpreting studies. Moreover, my PhD-project seeks to fill a gap of knowledge about interpreters´ visual bodily signals when rendering from a signed to a spoken language.

Interpreting from a signed to a spoken language entails situating utterances that used to belong to a visual language ecology into a language ecology with both visual and auditive resources, or a unified speech gesture-system (Holler 2022). In this presentation, I exemplify how two interpreters recontextualize the depictive resource of constructed dialogue. Drawing on Goodwin´s (2000; 2017) notion of contextual configuration, I demonstrate and discuss the observations of embodied pragmatic processes deployed to properly recontextualize constructed dialogue in its new ecological surroundings.

The in-depth multimodal analysis of interpreters´ renditions provides a glance into the characteristics of the important pragmatic choices made in simultaneous interpreting. My explorative PhD-project thus contributes to the acknowledgement of pragmatic competence as an essential part of interpreters´ competence (Gallai 2017), and argues the extended reflections on naturally occurring data are important contributions to the field of interpreting.

The seminar takes place at HVL and is offered in a hybrid format via Zoom. The talk will be from 12:00 to 13:00 and is preceded by our weekly sign lunch at HVL from 11:15 to 12:00. Langauges: IS, English, NTS.

To receive the Zoom link to connect, please send an email to Ari Price (jupr@hvl.no) to be added to the mailing list.