The Quest for Argumentative Equivalence: Argumentative patterns in political interpreting contexts

256 Pages·2020·1.953 MB·English

by  Emanuele Brambilla

The Quest for
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John Benjamins Publishing Company
The Quest for Argumentative Equivalence
Argumentation in Context (AIC)
issn 1877-6884
This book series highlights the variety of argumentative practices that have become
established in modern society by focusing on the study of context-dependent
characteristics of argumentative discourse that vary according to the demands of the
more or less institutionalized communicative activity type in which the discourse
takes place. Examples of such activity types are parliamentary debates and political
interviews, medical consultations and health brochures, legal annotations and judicial
sentences, editorials and advertorials in newspapers, and scholarly reviews and essays.
For an overview of all books published in this series, please see
benjamins.com/catalog/aic
Editors
Frans H. van Eemeren Bart Garssen
ILIAS & Leiden University ILIAS & University of Amsterdam
& University of Amsterdam
Editorial Board
Mark Aakhus Andrea Rocci
Rutgers University University of Lugano
Marianne Doury Sara Rubinelli
Université Paris Descartes ILIAS, Swiss Paraplegic Research &
Eveline Feteris University of Lucerne
ILIAS & University of Amsterdam Takeshi Suzuki
G. Thomas Goodnight Meiji University
University of Southern California Giovanni Tuzet
Cornelia Ilie Bocconi University
Strömstad Academy, Sweden David Zarefsky
Sally Jackson Northwestern University
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Gábor Zemplén
Manfred Kienpointner Budapest University of Technology
University of Innsbrueck and Economics
Volume 18
The Quest for Argumentative Equivalence
Argumentative patterns in political interpreting contexts
by Emanuele Brambilla
The Quest for
Argumentative Equivalence
Argumentative patterns
in political interpreting contexts
Emanuele Brambilla
International University of Languages and Media (IULM), Milan
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
doi 10.1075/aic.18
Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress:
lccn 2019056163
isbn 978 90 272 0509 4 (Hb)
isbn 978 90 272 6142 7 (e-book)
© 2020 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com
Table of contents
List of tables ix
List of figures xi
Transcription conventions xiii
Acknowledgements xv
Introduction 1
chapter 1
Strategic manoeuvring in political interpreting contexts 9
1.1 Research on interpreting in political contexts 9
1.2 Topical selection: Implications for interpreting 13
1.3 Adaptation to audience demand: Implications for interpreting 22
1.4 Exploitation of presentational devices: Implications for interpreting 30
1.5 Argumentative equivalence 39
chapter 2
Corpus and methodology 43
2.1 Background: The financial-economic crisis and the Great Recession 44
2.2 Data homogeneity and representativeness 48
2.3 Technical details of the corpus 51
2.4 The American sub-corpus 54
2.5 The British sub-corpus 55
2.6 The French sub-corpus 56
2.7 Analytical methodology 57
2.8 Introductory remarks on crisis-related argumentation 63
chapter 3
Barack Obama 69
3.1 Analogy argumentation 69
3.2 Argumentation from values 76
3.3 Anecdotal arguments 84
3.3.1 Shift towards the third person and towards indirect and direct
speech 88
vi The Quest for Argumentative Equivalence
3.3.2 Shift from logical to chronological linkage 89
3.3.3 Shift in verb tense 91
3.3.4 Shift towards vividness 91
3.3.5 Anticipation of anecdotal arguments 93
3.3.6 Anecdotal arguments: A hindrance to reformulation 94
3.3.7 Possible strategies to interpret anecdotal arguments 98
3.4 Differences between national and international speeches 102
chapter 4
David Cameron 105
4.1 Deficit reduction and the promotion of growth 105
4.2 The global race and its counterpart 111
4.3 The Big Society 117
4.4 Argumentation in EU settings 122
4.5 The slippery slope argument 126
4.6 The straw man argument 132
4.7 Authority argumentation 133
4.8 A rhetorical peculiarity 134
chapter 5
Nicolas Sarkozy 137
5.1 Introduction to the French text collection 137
5.2 Analogy argumentation 138
5.3 A crisis of confidence 141
5.4 The moralisation of financial capitalism 145
5.5 The restoration of the value of work 152
5.6 Other pragmatic arguments 157
5.7 The straw man argument 159
5.8 Questions used as rhetorical devices 160
5.9 A further rhetorical peculiarity 162
5.10 A further argumentative peculiarity 165
chapter 6
François Hollande 167
6.1 From Sarkozy to Hollande 167
6.2 The perpetuation of the crisis of confidence 168
6.3 Deficit reduction 173
6.4 Growth 176
6.5 The social conference 182
6.6 Argumentation in European and international contexts 191
6.7 A syntactic peculiarity 194
Table of contents vii
chapter 7
Conclusions 197
7.1 Argumentative patterns in the ARGO corpus 197
7.2 Political argumentation: Implications for simultaneous interpreting 200
7.3 Further research 202
References 205
Appendix 217
Index 237

List of tables
Table 1.1 O mission and/or misinterpretation of intertextual and
interdiscursive references in the ST-IT passage 17
Table 1.2 T ypes of political communication settings and related types of
interpreting 24
Table 1.3 I mpact of communication settings on speech
topicality and register 27
Table 1.4 E xample of interpreters’ failures in coping with
situational constraints 28
Table 1.5 Constraints of the broader context: implications for interpreting 29
Table 1.6 Non-reproduction of alliteration in the IT 31
Table 1.7 Incomplete reproduction of anaphora in the IT 32
Table 1.8 I nterpreting in the pragmatic dark: Obama’s 2009
Inauguration Speech 35
Table 1.9 I nterpreting in the pragmatic dark: Obama’s 2008
Victory Speech 38
Table 1.10 Argument “dissolution” in the ST-IT passage 39
Table 2.1 Technical details of the corpus 53
Table 3.1 Difficulties in interpreting narrative passages (1) 86
Table 3.2 Difficulties in interpreting narrative passages (2) 87
Table 3.3 Students’ failure to grasp Obama’s anecdote 88
Table 3.4 D iscourse genres – adapted from Longacre (1974: 358) and
van Leeuwen (2010: 347) 89
Table 3.5 Strategic reformulation of anecdotal arguments 100
Table 3.6 L exical indicators of anecdotal arguments and possible
interpreting strategies 102
Table 4.1 Strategic reformulation of slippery slope arguments (1) 131
Table 4.2 Strategic reformulation of slippery slope arguments (2) 131
Table 5.1 Reformulation by elimination of anaphora 163
Table 5.2 Reformulation by elimination of anaphora and/or repetition 164
Table 6.1 Strategic interpretation of parenthetical clauses 196