Negotiating intersubjectivity by interpersonal and appraisal shifts in Chinese-English government press conference interpreting.

This study investigates how interpreting shifts of interpersonal and appraisal resources facilitated the successful negotiation of intersubjectivity at China's premier press conferences (PPCs) from 2016 to 2021. This study conducts a corpus-based critical discourse analysis of interpersonal shifts at the PPCs as defined by systematic functional linguistics. Quantitative results show that the interpreter is strongly inclined to utilize appraisal shifts which enhance (or soften) the positive (or negative) evaluations of the Chinese government in interpreting the journalists' questions and uses shifts to first-person plurals and inclinational modal verbs in interpreting the Chinese Premier's answers. Qualitative results show these shifts facilitate the direct or indirect reproduction of the government's official ideology (especially the notions of solidarity, change, resolution, and people's wellbeing) and the existing power relations between the government, media, and Chinese people (both authority and solidarity). It is concluded that the interpreter displays a strong tendency to use interpersonal shifts to ensure successful negotiation of intersubjectivity at the PPCs by ultimately reproducing the social status quo.

A Corpus-Based Investigation of Extra-Textual, Connective, and Emphasizing Additions in English-Chinese Conference Interpreting.

Findings from conference interpreting research in the Chinese context have suggested that interpreters barely produce extra-textual additions in rigidly structured press conferences, and that adding connectives and intensifiers is only required to help the English-speaking audience capture the logic embedded in implicit Chinese interclausal relations. Previous research in the Chinese context has tended to draw data almost exclusively from the Chinese Premier's Press Conference interpreting, which features interpreting from Chinese into English. In order to enrich conference interpreting corpora in Asia and to examine additions in the opposite interpreting direction for the same language pair, this study drew on authentic materials of six interpreted press conferences held at the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT). Contrary to previous research, our results showed that conference interpreters exhibited a certain degree of "visibility" through producing extra-textual additions, which is typical of interpreting in various community-based settings. Moreover, the addition of extra connectives and intensifiers that are common in Chinese-to-English interpreting was also identified. It is proposed that the interpreters' production of extra-textual additions is connected with the specific context of the AIT, whereas the connective and emphasizing additions are to a large extent caused by the grammaticalization process wherein particular linguistic devices change into discourse markers to fulfill the communicative needs in both English and Chinese.

The discursive (re)construction of social relations in a crisis situation: A genre analytical approach to press conferences on COVID-19 in China.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has imposed a great threat both to people's health and to social relations. By following the theoretical constructions of critical genre analysis and critical discourse analysis and drawing on the 35 press conferences on the COVID-19 outbreak in China, this paper explores how the discourse of press conferences is used by the Chinese government as a means of crisis management to (re)construct social relations. The analysis of the data reveals a hybridity of social relations reproduced discursively between such social actors as government institutions, the general public, medical institutions or staff, and COVID-19 patients, and a distinct feature of interdiscursivity of the discourse of press conferences on COVID-19, with descriptive, instructional, strategic, and evaluative discourses being the most frequently employed. It is also found that political, professional, social, and cultural forces are interwoven with each other to contribute to the interdiscursivity of the discourse of press conferences and the hybridity of social relations constructed thereof.

[Measuring and Mediating the Crisis in the Early Situation Reports on the Corona Pandemic: a German-French Comparison]. / Vermessung und Vermittlung der Krise in den frühen Lageberichten zur Corona-Pandemie: ein deutsch-französischer Vergleich.

With the arrival of the coronavirus in Europe in early 2020, situation reports by the state health institutions - the Robert Koch-Institut and the Direction générale de la santé - begin in Germany and France at relatively the same time. These oral presentations by experts serve both to describe the current spread of the virus and to justify the measures that need to be taken. This article examines a number of situation reports from both countries with regard to similarities and differences at the linguistic level. In addition to the communicative acts of describing and interpreting the situation, arguing for measures, and giving recommendations and orders, the newly emerging lexis for naming the virus and the masks will be examined. The comparison of German and French text excerpts shows that the two events, which take place in parallel but independently from each other, have numerous similarities. Differences that can be shown concern, in the field of measures and appeals, the diverging political function of the two health institutes, with a rather advisory role of the Robert Koch-Institut compared to the Direction générale de la santé as part of the Ministry of Health and thus as the stronger political decision-maker.

Performing rituals of affliction: how a Governor's Press conferences provided mediatized sanctuary in Ohio.

This paper studies the ritual and aesthetic performances of Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine's Coronavirus press conferences. It argues that the press conferences are mediatized sanctuaries-solidaristic respites from the chaos of pandemic and partisan politics. They achieve this via performing a regular ritual of affliction where basic cultural commitments are affirmed, institutional action is validated, and the where the trouble of Coronavirus can healed as a result.