Translation of strategic ambiguity: A relevance-theoretic analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rasheed S. Al-Jarrah ◽  
Ahmad M. Abu-Dalu ◽  
Hisham Obiedat
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Ambiguity Resolution ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Relevance Theory ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Theoretic Analysis ◽  
Strategic Ambiguity ◽  
The One ◽  
Point Of Departure

AbstractThe purpose of our current research is to see how Relevance Theory can handle one specific translation problem, namely strategic ambiguous structures. Concisely, we aim to provide a conceptual framework as to how the translator should cope with a pervasive ambiguity problem at the discoursal level. The point of departure from probably all previous models of analysis is that a relevance-theoretic analysis would, we believe, require that a “good” translation benotthe one that representsan interpretationof the text, but the one which leaves the door open for all interpretations which the original text provides evidence for. Hence,the role of translator is not to ‘interpret’ but to ‘translate’. If this is true, ambiguity resolution should not be a viable alternative. In other words, what the translator should do is empower the audience with all it takes to let them work out all the explicatures (linguistically inferred meanings) and entertain themselves with the implicatures (contextually inferred meanings) of the original. Direct Translation, along the lines laid down by Gutt (1991/2000), is the method of translation which can, we believe, bring about the desired results because “it tries to provide readers with contextual information that enables them to draw their own inferences” (Smith 2000: 92).

Interpretive Representation: A Relevance-Theoretic Analysis of the Opening Paragraph of Carlyle's Chartism

2005 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Keeble
Keyword(s):  
Relevance Theory ◽  
Theoretic Analysis ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractThis paper demonstrates the capacity of relevance theory to illuminate the stylistic features of a complex piece of literary prose and in particular to shed light on the level of coherence inherent in the text examined. Taking some independent critical observations of the writer's style as a point of departure, it provides a close analysis of the opening paragraph of Thomas Carlyle's essay

Quelques particularités dans l’expression de la détermination du nom. Comparaison entre cinq langues romanes

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 39-54
Author(s):  
Gorana Bikić-Carić
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Indefinite Article ◽  
Change Of Perspective ◽  
The One ◽  
Time Description

"Some Features in the Expression of the Noun Determination. Comparison Between Five Romance Languages. In this article we would like to compare the noun determination in five Romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian). All the languages examined here share the main uses of articles: known referent, generic use, unique entities, abstract names, inalienable possession for the definite article, or introduction of a new element into the discourse and description for the indefinite article. However, we wanted to show some peculiarities. We used the same text in five languages, (La sombra del viento, Carlos Ruiz Zafón) which is part of the RomCro corpus, composed in the Chair of Romance Linguistics of the Department of Romance Studies, Faculty of Humanities, University of Zagreb, Croatia. The results of the analysis showed a clear difference between French and the other languages. As expected, French uses the indefinite article in plural much more often, as well as the partitive article, which does not exist in Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian. Likewise, the possessive adjective is more common in French than in other languages which use the definite article instead. But what is particularly interesting are the differences which indicate a ""change of perspective"", namely a different kind of article than in the original text. Our conclusion is that the noun can have several characteristics at the same time (description or determination by complement, generic use or absence of specific referent etc.) of which the author (or the translator) chooses the one to highlight. Likewise, we have underlined the role of article zero, which can carry different values (unspecified referent, but also unspecified quantity or even definite article value if the noun is introduced by a preposition), depending on its relationship to other articles in the language.

A Relevance–Theoretical Account of Three Arabic Pragmatic Operators of Concession in a Political Discourse

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rasheed S. Al-Jarrah ◽  
Ahmad M. Abu Dalu ◽  
Marwan Jarrah
Keyword(s):  
Ambiguity Resolution ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Relevance Theory ◽  
Viable Alternative ◽  
Jordanian Arabic ◽  
Theoretical Account ◽  
Social Settings ◽  
Viable Approach ◽  
Discourse Connectives ◽  
Point Of Departure

AbstractThe present study aims at explaining how the Relevance Theory could be a viable approach to weigh up the main functions of some concessive Pragmatic Operators (henceforth POs) in Jordanian Arabic at the production and interpretation levels. A sample of twenty-two speeches delivered by members of the Jordanian Parliament the 16th was randomly selected for scrutiny. Three POs (namely, laakin, bal and wa) detected in their speeches were analyzed at the token level in light of three elementary RT assumptions about discourse connectives in general, namely connectivity (Fraser 1996), the conceptual-procedural distinction (Blakemore 1987, 1988, 1992, 2002; Wilson and Sperber 1993; Grice 1989), and monosemy (Fretheim 2000; cf. Borderia 2008). The major finding of this study was that concessive POs, as a subset of contrastives, are used to optimize relevance: highlight certain dimensions and/or suppress others of the scenario to the background. However, the point of departure from possibly all previous treatments is that the speakers, as politicians, still used them more strategically because total ambiguity resolution should not be a viable alternative in social settings laden with politics.

Woman, time and the incommunicability of non-Western worlds: understanding the role of gender in the colonial denial of coevalness

2021 ◽  
pp. 146470012098739
Author(s):  
Azille Coetzee
Keyword(s):  
Linear Time ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Rhetorical Device ◽  
The One ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Specific Construction ◽  
Temporal Ordering ◽  
Gender Discourses

Central to the functioning of colonialism and coloniality is a specific construction of time, in terms of which the spatial ordering of the world also translates into a temporal ordering. Anthropologist Johannes Fabian argues that there is a specific rhetorical device at work here, namely the ‘denial of coevalness’, which is a colonial distancing strategy through which other worlds are robbed of validity on account of not existing within the same time as the West. In this article, I aim to add to analyses of scholars like Fabian, Chakrabarty and Mignolo by arguing that this colonial temporal ordering, which persists today, is also thoroughly gendered. As a point of departure I use Walter Mignolo’s idea that the denial of coevalness relies on two distinctions, namely nature versus culture, and tradition versus modernity. I argue that the discursive construction of nature (as opposed to culture) and tradition (as opposed to modernity) centres on gendered assumptions and an obsession with control over women’s bodies. In the course of making this argument, I also point out the overlaps, as well as key differences, between woman’s exclusion from Western linear time, on the one hand, and the temporal distancing of the colonised, on the other. In particular, I show how Western linear chronology positions Western women and previously colonised women in vastly different ways. I argue that if one considers the extent to which the denial of coevalness relies on colonial gender discourses, the erasure of indigenous sexuate knowledges that contradict the colonial gender discourses is not one erasure among many, but one of the key erasures that colonial temporality hinges on. A crucial implication of my analysis is that the process of undoing, deconstructing or dismantling the colonial denial of coevalness is also inherently a feminist project.

scholarly journals Von Government zu Governance

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
State Of Research ◽  
The One ◽  
Supranational Level

This volume researches concepts of direct, participatory and deliberative democracy, their structures and procedures, and the role of actors. On the one hand, the volume focuses on questions of institutionalisation and the context sensitivity of participation-centred procedures in European federal and regional states. On the other hand, the volume addresses the question of the role that actors at the supranational level play or can play in the renewal of democratic processes. The state of research and its findings in theoretical and empirical democracy research provide the overarching conceptual framework for the volume. With contributions by Elisabeth Alber, Eva Maria Belser, Peter Bussjäger, Carmen Descamps, Annegret Eppler, Anna Gamper, Andreas Kiefer, Karl Kössler, Sabine Kropp, Olaf Leiße, Melanie Plangger, Julian Plottka, Wolf J. Schünemann, Christoph Schramek, Teija Tiilikainen, Jens Woelk and Carolin Zwilling.

scholarly journals The Black Heroine in the Mirror: crossing the threshold of the specular image, the esoteric journey and the encounter with the annihilating I in Jordan Peele’s Us

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gitanjali Kapila
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Hero's Journey ◽  
The Self ◽  
Joseph Campbell ◽  
Mirror Stage ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Specular Image ◽  
The One ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Ideal

Using the conceptual framework of the mirror-stage established by Lacan to describe the initial anchoring of the subject, this paper seeks to interrogate the mirror as the locus of a secondary elaboration of the hero’s journey which follows its traditional articulation adumbrated by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. If the goal of the classic hero as Campbell suggests is to exit the nursery which represents the subject’s entrapment in Oedipal triangulation, this study posits that the successful selfrelease of the hero from the nursery simply sees him entering another nursery where the hero’s world is conceived of as a series of infinitely nested nurseries without exit. The mirror and its binding capture become the exemplary point of departure for the secondary elaboration of the journey for which, it turns out, the black heroine is the ideal adventurer. It is no wonder then that Jordan Peele’s Us is replete with mirrors functioning as cinematic signifiers for the portals effecting the subject’s displacement not towards an outer world of aggressive fathers and unobtainable ideal mothers; but, rather into a proximate encounter with the self, one precipitated by the mirror where the goal of the journey –the one that can only be revealed by the black heroine– is the apprehension of the “cipher of [her] moral destiny” and the unfathomable cartography of her true exit.

scholarly journals SYNTAX AS AN OBJECT OF PARODY

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 40-51
Author(s):  
Boris Ju. Norman ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Speech Styles ◽  
Text Collections ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Communicative Effect ◽  
Linguistic Units

In the mind of the native speaker, there is an idea of the syntactic “optimum”, which allows them to use linguistic units most effectively to achieve a desired communicative effect. It contains a set of pieces of intuitive (“naïve”) knowledge about the parameters of the sentence, the organization of its structure, the rules of correspondence of lexical and grammatical meanings, etc. Deviations from this optimum can become independent objects of not only scholarly research, but also parody in a literary text. The article analyzes the problem lying on the borderline between linguistics, literary criticism and psychology: What syntactic features of the original text are enhanced or hyperbolized in parody? Analysis of numerous examples from Russian fiction allows the author to make a conclusion about the metalinguistic significance of certain features of the structure of the text. Collections of literary parodies (by A. Arkhangelsky, A. Ivanov, etc.) were subject to a special (continuous) analysis. The following syntactic phenomena were identified as the object and reason for their reflection in the parodies: a) excessive length of the sentence; b) artificial complication of its structure, specifically by means of chains of consecutive subordination, homogeneous members, abundance of epithets, etc.; c) absolutization of elements of oral, official and other speech styles, including the “telegraph style”; d) violation of the isosemy rule; e) non-realization of obligatory syntactic valency (unmotivated ellipsis); f) separation from the sentence of its part (parcellation), etc. These phenomena, used systematically, obtain a linguo-psychological characterization of salience (identifiability against the general background). As a result of the study, the author made up a list of syntactic facts that acquire the role of secondary signs in a work of fiction, along with other stylistic categories. Such a list, on the one hand, is intended to serve the convergence of scholarly (“academic”) and mass (“secondary school”) grammar, and, on the other hand, is of interest to experimental psychology, which studies the problems of perception and comprehension of the text.

Knowing and not knowing: Style, intention and the translation of a Holocaust poem

2004 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Boase-Beier
Keyword(s):  
Relevance Theory ◽  
Original Text ◽  
The Holocaust

My aim in this article is to consider the role of the literary translator both as close reader of an original text and as creator of a new text which preserves essential characteristics of the original. Questions such as the intentions and choices of the original author will clearly play a large part in decisions on how to translate, and, using the notion of translation as interpretative use developed within relevance theory, I shall argue here that a translator cannot avoid such questions, and must use clues in the style of the poem to provide answers. As an illustration I look at a German poem about the Holocaust and consider how its central ambiguity can be rendered in English.

You Are the One I Want to Communicate With!

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabrina Pierucci ◽  
Olivier Klein ◽  
Andrea Carnaghi
Keyword(s):  
Memory Bias ◽  
Shared Reality ◽  
Communication Partner ◽  
Shared Reality Theory ◽  
The One ◽  
Study Participants

This article investigates the role of relational motives in the saying-is-believing effect ( Higgins & Rholes, 1978 ). Building on shared reality theory, we expected this effect to be most likely when communicators were motivated to “get along” with the audience. In the current study, participants were asked to describe an ambiguous target to an audience who either liked or disliked the target. The audience had been previously evaluated as a desirable vs. undesirable communication partner. Only participants who communicated with a desirable audience tuned their messages to suit their audience’s attitude toward the target. In line with predictions, they also displayed an audience-congruent memory bias in later recall.

The Formation of Intermediate Product I in a Purified System The Role of Factor IX or of its Precursor and of a Hageman Factor-PTA Fraction

1961 ◽  
Vol 6 (02) ◽  
pp. 224-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. T Yin ◽  
F Duckert
Keyword(s):  
Intermediate Product ◽  
Factor Ix ◽  
Assay Method ◽  
Lag Phase ◽  
Factor X ◽  
Haemophilia B ◽  
Hageman Factor ◽  
One Stage ◽  
The One

Summary1. The role of two clot promoting fractions isolated from either plasma or serum is studied in a purified system for the generation of intermediate product I in which the serum is replaced by factor X and the investigated fractions.2. Optimal generation of intermediate product I is possible in the purified system utilizing fractions devoid of factor IX one-stage activity. Prothrombin and thrombin are not necessary in this system.3. The fraction containing factor IX or its precursor, no measurable activity by the one-stage assay method, controls the yield of intermediate product I. No similar fraction can be isolated from haemophilia B plasma or serum.4. The Hageman factor — PTA fraction shortens the lag phase of intermediate product I formation and has no influence on the yield. This fraction can also be prepared from haemophilia B plasma or serum.

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