El III Acuerdo Nacional de Formación Continua (III ANFC)

Since its beginnings at the Critical Link conference in Canada, the community-based domain of interpreting studies (and, in particular, legal interpreting) has come into closer contact with the mainstream conference interpreting research community, leading towards a growing integration of interpreting studies as a discipline. However, its analytical momentum has not been generated from within the discipline’s existing paradigms, but rather scholars have looked at other theoretical frameworks for relevant models and methods. As underlined in 2.2.2, an obvious source of inspiration for liaison interpreting studies has been linguistics, and in particular text linguistics.

In the 1970s, an interdisciplinary framework labelled cognitive science emerged from the collaboration of academics in such field as varied as linguistics, psychology, artificial intelligence and philosophy. Cognitive scientists focused their work on natural language processing46 and this had a significant influence on text linguistics, and in particular on the work of Robert-Alain de Beaugrande, one of the leading figures of the European tradition in this discipline (de Beaugrande & Dressler, 1981).

This branch of linguistics sees texts as communication systems and was originally aimed at describing text grammars. However, the application of text linguistics has evolved from this

46 _{The school of ordinary language philosophy, whose focus was on natural language rather than formal}

languages studied by the logicians, flourished mainly at Oxford in the 1950s and 1960s under the leadership of J. L. Austin. He developed the theory of speech acts that had a great impact on interpreting studies, as mentioned in 2.2.2.

approach to a point in which text is viewed in much broader terms that go beyond a mere extension of traditional grammar towards an entire text.

4.1.1 Textual well-formedness

Harris (1951) and Longacre (1979) posit that discourse has a “grammatical structure (…) partially expressed in the hierarchical breakdown of discourse into constituent embedded discourses and paragraphs and in the breakdown of paragraphs into constituent embedded paragraphs and sentences” (Longacre, 1979: 115). This structuralist view is based on the assumption that a text cannot simply be made up of a set of grammatical sentences. Consider the following two utterances:

(1) My partner bakes bread at least twice a week using sourdough, which is one of two principal means of biological leavening in bread baking, along with the use of cultivated forms of yeast.

(2) My partner bakes regularly. Miss Lawson is a famous baker and food writer. A particular genre of writing is philosophical writing. Free thought is a philosophical viewpoint, according to which opinions should not be influenced by any exclusive maître à penser. The latter comes from French, known as the language of love.

While we intuitively think that example (1) represents an acceptable text, example (2) may be seen as a collection of unrelated sentences (cf. Halliday & Hasan, 1976; Salkie, 1995).

Most text linguists would agree that text is the natural domain of language, but they still differ in their perspectives of what constitutes and defines a text and its well-formedness; this variance is mainly due to the different methods of observations. Thus, according to Harris (1951), Hovy (1990), Hovy & Maier (1994), Longacre (1979), and Salkie (1995), discourse can be seen as a structural unit and studied by analogy with the sentence. According to this view, discourse analysis is therefore the study of structural properties of discourse; or, in other words, “text and discourse analysis is about how sentences combine to form texts” (Salkie, 1995: 32). If text is treated as a collection of sentences, then its well-formedness can be judged in the same way as we judge that of a sentence.

Given this conception of discourse - understood by analogy to syntactic (and therefore hierarchical) structure - it is not surprising to find that discourse ‘markers’ (or ‘connectives’)

are defined in terms of their role in ‘marking’ these hierarchical relationships that exist between the segments of text or discourse, and the core of these approaches lies in the classifications of such relations, which vary considerably from author to author. 47

The view that discourse connectives encode structural relations between text segments is inspired by one of the most influential works on linguistic aspects of discourse, i.e. Halliday & Hasan’s (1976) Cohesion in English. Their book is based on the definition of text as a “unit of language in use” (1976: 2; my emphasis). According to this approach, a text is therefore a naturally occurring manifestation of language or “a set of mutually relevant communicative functions, structured in such a way as to achieve an overall rhetorical purpose” (Hatim & Mason, 1990: 32).

However, a number of scholars in text linguistics argue that Halliday & Hasan’s approach to cohesion is not an adequate definition of text and discourse analysis. In particular, one of the most influential claims in both psycholinguistics and computational literature studies - which was developed in response to Halliday & Hasan’s approach - is that textual well-formedness is to be accounted for in terms of coherence.

According to most proponents of this approach (e.g. Beaugrande & Dressler, 1981; Knott, 1996; Mann & Thompson, 1987, 1988),48 discourse is acceptable only if it characterised by set of (binary) coherence relations that hold between successive utterances in a discourse or between propositions expressed by text segments, e.g. elaboration, cause-consequence, temporal sequence, and so on. Consider, for example, the following utterance divided into segment (a) and (b):

(3) (a) I was told that I could go to Japan with them. (b) I was really happy.

47 _{The actual number of so-called ‘discourse markers’ is still a matter of controversy. For instance, whether you} know and I mean qualify is a moot point: according to Fraser (1999) they do not qualify because they fail to signify how the current discourse is linked to the preceding discourse, however even this criterion is not commonly accepted. We will address the question of whether they comprise a legitimate category (Blakemore, 2002; Schourup, 1999) in section 4.3.1.

48 _{There are other approaches to coherence, most notably: Reinhart (1980), Givón (1983), Sidner (1983), and}

Giora (1996a, 1996b)’s approach, according to which coherence is defined in terms of the way that the propositions expressed by each text segment are related to a topic; and Samet & Schank (1984)’s theory, according to which local coherence must be defined in terms of coherence relations, whereas global coherence

According to Mann & Thompson, the hearer will understand the utterance only if he assumes that there is a coherence relation between the two segments. In this case, the hearer will identify a causal relation: there is a causal chain linking the state of affairs or event represented in (3a) to the one represented in (3b). This analysis is based on the assumption that both speaker and hearer of (3) have a set of coherence relations and the speaker must choose one of them in order to produce an ‘acceptable’ text.

An example can be found in Hobbs (1979: 78):

(4) John can open Bill’s safe. He knows the combination.

The intended referent of the pronoun he is ambiguous, i.e. it could either be Bill or John. According to the author, the reference assignment of the pronoun he is a consequence of the search for coherence. Thus, we firstly recognise an elaboration (or explanation) relation based on our previous knowledge and, secondly, we identify the intended referent (John). The hearer is allowed to Interpret the utterance ‘correctly’ thanks to textual coherence. In this regard, Mann & Thompson (1987, 1988) are even more explicit by claiming that the speaker of the sequence intentionally communicates a relational proposition which expresses a particular structural relation.49

To sum up, a number of theorists posit that utterance Interpretation is about deriving assumptions about relationships in the discourse and that DMs encode these connections. We will now turn to the assumption which underlies these approaches, i.e. that acceptability and coherence go hand in hand.

4.1.2 Coherence and discourse acceptability

Blakemore (2001: 102) notes that “the success of a theory based on the assumption that the acceptability of discourse depends on coherence relations must be based on a complete taxonomy of coherence relations”. However, she also notes that there is no agreement as to what the set of coherence relations is. For instance, Hovy & Maier (1994) subclassify relations into 70 different types, whereas Mann & Thompson (1987) mention 15 relations

(e.g. motivation, reason, sequence, enablement, elaboration, and restatement), and Sanders, Spooren, & Noordman (1993) only four. Scholars further disagree over the definition of relations. For instance, the relation of elaboration is included in all accounts; however, there is no agreement as to its definition.

Apart from this issue, these approaches cannot be a basis for an account for textual well- formedness for two main reasons: their recognition is neither sufficient nor necessary. Firstly, the recognition of coherence relations is not sufficient as it is possible to construct texts which are “unacceptable even though they satisfy formal coherence relations” (Blakemore, 2001: 102). Consider, for instance, the following utterance:

(5) (a) My partner is passionate about baking. (b) He plays the cello beautifully.

Segment (5b) is meant to be an elaboration of segment (5a); however, it would be quite difficult to find a context whereby utterance (5) is acceptable as a ‘text’ according to a coherence perspective. Similarly, utterance (6) taken from Hobbs (1979, as mentioned in Blakemore 2001: 10) would be analysed as an elaboration:

(6) Go down Washington Street. Just follow Washington Street three blocks to Adams Street.

However, as Blass’ (1990) counter-example shows, not every utterance described as an elaboration may be analysed as appropriate:

(7) Go down Washington Street. Just pick up your left foot, place it down in front of your right foot, transfer your weight from right to left foot...

The same applies to restatement relations such as the following utterance from Blakemore (2001: 103), uttered after seeing a mouse on the bedroom floor:

In Mann & Thompson’s (1988) view, the effect of a restatement is simply that the hearer recognises that a restatement is being made. However this is not an adequate account in order to identify acceptable and unacceptable statements or distinguish the effects of a restatement derived from sequence (9) from those derived from sequence (10):

(9) (a) At the beginning of this piece there is an example of an anacrusis. (b) That is, it begins with an unaccented note which is not part of the first full bar. (Blakemore, 2001: 111)

(10) (a) A well-groomed car reflects its owner. (b) The car you drive says a lot about you. (Noel, 1986: 69, quoted in Mann & Thompson, 1987: 71)

These examples show that an explanatory account as to what renders certain coherence relations appropriate is required. This, in turn, suggests that there is a much more fundamental element to communication than coherence.

Secondly, the recognition of binary coherence relations in communication has been shown not to be necessary. As Blakemore (1987) and Blass (1990) have highlighted, verbal communication is full of ‘acceptable’ utterances which cannot be understood in isolation from the context, but which cannot be said to be part of a coherent text:

(11) [Someone comes in with loads of parcels] So you’ve spent all your money.

In example (11), taken from Blakemore (1987: 86), the speaker uses the discourse connective so discourse initially. As mentioned before, discourse connectives are examined by coherence theorists as indicators of or explicit guide to a range of coherence relations. However in example (11) there is no preceding text to which the discourse connective is linked; nonetheless, the hearer sees the utterance as acceptable and is able to Interpret it as a conclusion drawn from what she previously saw.

Knott & Dale (1994: 48) state that utterances such as (11) are to be “interpreted as a reaction to a previously existing propositional attitude (…) and this is arguably a kind of discourse context”. Therefore, one may continue to claim that discourse connective so - as used in (11) - encodes coherence relationships if one sees the utterance and its context as elements of a

discourse sequence.50 As Blakemore (1987, 1998) underlines, Knott & Dale (1994)’s account does not provide a satisfactory answer as to why apparently closely related DMs are not equally acceptable in non-linguistic contexts.51

Example (12) is taken from Blakemore (1992: 5) and represents a sign seen in the London underground station:

(12) Dogs must be carried.

The Interpretation of this sign as an indication to passengers with dogs always to carry their pet – rather than a direction to all passengers to carry a dog – depends on the passenger’s ability to access the appropriate contextual assumptions.

Coherence theorists do acknowledge the role of context, but for them, it is restricted to the identification of coherence relations. However, if the identification of coherence relations were necessary for comprehension, then it would seem to follow that only coherent discourses are comprehensible, i.e. we would not be able to understand an utterance without first having identified the coherence relation that connects it to the preceding text. However, this is obviously not the case.52

In this section, we have seen that scholars like Hobbs (1979), Mann & Thompson (1987, 1988), Asher & Lascarides (1995) and Knott (1996) maintain that textual well-formedness lies in “computable” (Hobbs, 1979: 78) coherence relations between its segments or, in other words, that a discourse is acceptable to the extent that it exhibits such relations. Within this framework, understanding is seen as a consequence for the search for coherence. However we

50 _{For instance, utterance (11) may be treated as if it were part of the following discourse sequence: “You are}

carrying plenty of bags full of goods. So you’ve spent all your money.”

51 _{Blakemore (1987) provides the following utterance, where so is deemed appropriate, whereas therefore is not:}

“[Speaker finds a £5 note in his wallet] ?Therefore I didn’t spend all the money”. We will re-assess DMs under a relevance-theoretic perspective in 4.3.1.

52 _{The same principle applies to examples of interruptions (Blakemore, 2002; Blass, 1990), such as:}

A: What did you want to say? B: I must be off now.

Again one may ask whether the cognitive processes involved in accessing and using contextual assumptions in the interpretation of isolated utterances like interruptions – as well as the principles governing those processes – should be different from the ones involved in the interpretation of utterances which are part of a text, such as those in example (1).

have demonstrated that the notion of coherence cannot be described as either necessary or sufficient a condition for textual well-formedness and discourse comprehension. As Wilson (1996) and Blakemore (1997, 2001, 2002) have claimed, this is not to say that we are capable of recognising coherence relations such as restatement, exemplification or elaboration. The fundamental question, however, is: are such relations computed in the course of utterance comprehension? As Sperber Wilson (1986/1995: 244) put it with reference to speech acts and illocutionary force (later extended by Blakemore to cover coherence relations):

It is one thing to invent, for one’s own theoretical purposes, a set of categories to use in classifying the utterances of native speakers. It is quite another to claim that such a classification plays a necessary role in communication and comprehension. To see the one type of investigation as necessarily shedding light on the other is a bit like moving from the observation that tennis players can generally classify strokes as volleys, lobs […] and so on, to the conclusion that they are unable to perform or return a stroke without correctly classifying it.

In other words, if the identification of coherence relations is to be deemed necessary for comprehension, then utterance understanding would not occur unless hearers first identify the coherence relations that connect the speaker’s utterance to the preceding text.

Blakemore’s (1997) examination of temporal sequences and elaboration sequences – such as the ones analysed in examples (3) or (4) – has further demonstrated that if understanding involves identifying the proposition expressed and the speaker’s attitude toward such proposition and deriving cognitive effects, then the identification of coherence relations cannot be a prerequisite for successful comprehension, but rather a derivative phenomenon. As we shall see in the more detailed account of DMs in 4.3, coherence-based approaches treat DMs such as so and moreover as markers of coherence relations: as Fraser (1990) and Schiffrin (1987) say, they function as ‘discourse glue’. However, as Blakemore (2002) has argued, this sort of approach cannot explain why DMs which are associated with the same coherence relation – for example, but and however, which are said to be associated with contrast – are not intersubstitutable in all contexts. In other words, the coherence approach to discourse cannot explain why discourse markers associated with a particular coherence relation are at once so similar and so different. More generally, if coherence relations are recovered as a result of understanding discourse and are not a prerequisite for discourse

comprehension, then it cannot be the case that a coherence-based approach to discourse can provide the basis for a theory of discourse understanding. This raises the question of how we should explain the role of DMs such as so and moreover.

Now, where should we turn to in order to explain the understanding of utterances containing DMs? Is there a theory not construed on coherence relations that can “capture our intuitions about the unity of discourse” (Blakemore, 2002: 167)? In the next section, I will focus on one of the two theoretical frameworks adopted in this thesis, i.e. Relevance Theory (RT), which argues that an account of discourse comprehension “should not be regarded as a by-product of a theory of discourse (…) coherence, but is actually the key to the explanations of our intuitions about coherence” (Blakemore, 2001: 102). More specifically, it is hypothesised that coherence is a consequence of the hearer’s search for an Interpretation that is consistent with Sperber & Wilson’s (1986) Principle of Relevance.