Mediation of Cohesive Clues in Simultaneous Interpreting: A Perspective of Interactive Embodiment and Mental Coherence

Mediation of Cohesive Clues in Simultaneous Interpreting: A Perspective of Interactive Embodiment and Mental Coherence Gao Wei Heriot-Watt University Abstract Based on interactive embodiment and mental coherence of cognitive linguistics (CL) (Lakoff1987, 1999; Langacker 2000, Zwaan2000, Wang Yin 2006) and also Relevance Theory (RT) (Sperber and Wilson 1986, 1995), this paper aims to reveal how simultaneous interpreters mediate in cohesive clues to keep interpreting discourse hanging together via two dimensions: (1) mental contacts for content coherence, (2) lexical, grammatical and logical connectors for form cohesion, ultimately building up a cohesive clues model. A pilot study of preliminary experiment involves three students of Heriot-Watt, who have Chinese as their A language and English as their B language. The data is collected from English to Chinese. The experiment engages subjects in the embodiment based CL Immersed Experiencer Frame (Zwaan2000) through three basic stages: activation, construal and integration. The outcomes are taped and recorded. Quantifying analysis is undertaken in terms of both content and form cohesive clues. It proves that interactive embodiment and mental coherence are felt in discourse coherence and cohesion of simultaneous interpreting (SI) via cognitive models, including iconicity, mental space, frame, schema, facilitating interpreters’ performance and it suggests that bodily based coherence in mental text is more fundamental and primary than intextual cohesive devices, the former is the cognitive prerequisite for the latter (Wang Yin .2006).