Modalisation and pragmatics in simultaneous TV interpreting. A case study: American presidential debates

Abstract

“Politics is quintessentially a language game”, as Geis (1987: 13) wrote. As such it has its own rules, which politicians are expected to abide by, especially when addressing a television audience during a debate. Interpreters having to cope withmedia events1 are required to act professionally while remain pragmatically and interactionally aware of the situation. Therefore, they may use a number of linguistic strategies and devices primarily aiming at accomplishing specific communicative functions. However, such process may lead to a change in the pragmatic level of the interpreted text (IT) if compared to the original one (OT). This paper aims at analysing the impact discourse modalisation has on ITs. The research carried out on simultaneous interpreting (SI) of five American presidential debates ranging from 1984 to 2008 would suggest that modality markers used in the target language may emphasise the pragmatic level of ITs, whereas omissions and inaccurate renditions of speakers‘ statements would determine a mitigation of the emotional impact as perceived by interpretation users.