Interpreting as interaction : On dialogue-interpreting in immigration hearings and medical encounters

Abstract: This thesis is based on twenty recorded encounters involving, on the one hand Russian speaking laymen, on the other Swedish-speaking representatives of public institutions -- police-officers, nurses and doctors -- and, "in the middle" Dialogue Interpreters.The normative role (Goffman) of a professional Dialogue Interpreter, i.e. what is prescribed, for example in the official code of conduct, presupposes the performing individual to translate as closely as possible everything uttered by each party talking in her or his own language. The typical role (Goffman) of the Dialogue Interpreter, however, involves both relaying and co-ordinating these persons' talk.The thesis analyses the complex structure of participation framework in dialogue interpreted interaction. The variations in primary parties' and Dialogue Interpreters' speaker and hearer roles are explored. The intricate collaborative construction of interactional meaning in face-to-face encounters is investigated in detail in an analysis of the genesis and management of mis-communication events.The study is descriptive and exploratory in orientation. The field of research is a relatively new one, and different analytical frameworks need to be developed and applied to empirical data. The author has chosen to apply a dialogic (Bakhtin) view on discourse, rather than a monologic one, seeing interpreting as interaction, and generating categories from the corpus of data, rather than testing a priori categories.