Abstract
This chapter presents an interdisciplinary methodology which is custom-designed for the study of consecutive interpreting. The need for a specific methodology rises from the mixed perspective on the phenomenon that involves two dimensions: phenomenological and empirical. In this chapter, I introduce the main analytical concepts and types of phenomenological analysis. I subsequently connect them to respective communication methods (ethnomethodology and conversation analysis) that are based on the analysis of the naturally occurring data and symbolic interactionism, which examines consecutive interpreting metaphorically, such as film. The direction of the analysis is progressive as it moves from investigating essential structures of consecutive interpreting to its symbolic meaning. Special attention is paid to the relationship between general phenomenological conceptualizations and specific empirical applications.
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Notes
- 1.
In The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl is explicit about psychology’s dualistic and psychialistic presuppositions and prejudices when he writes: ‘Psychology had to fail because it could fulfill its task, the investigation of the concrete, only through a radical, completely unprejudiced reflection. Instead of seeking the concrete in the lifeworld, psychology began with the concept of soul which stemmed from Cartesian dualism’ (1970a, pp. 211–212).
- 2.
According to Merleau-Ponty, intentionality is the condition for experiencing the world beyond perceptual acts in the ‘pure’ form (2002, p. 146).
- 3.
This orientation made Sokolowski claim that phenomenon is essentially an intentionality and so are categorial phenomena, especially, because ‘they elevate us into a properly human form of truth, the truth that involves speech and reasoning’ (2000, p. 103).
- 4.
The actual quote runs as follows: ‘But to judge rationally or scientifically about things signifies to conform or to go from words and opinions back to the things themselves, to consult them in their self-givenness and to set aside all prejudices alien to them’ (Husserl 1970b, p. 35).
- 5.
- 6.
This approach to reduction differs from Patočka’s approach, which offers a more traditional typology: ‘eidetic reduction which is designed to attain pure immanence; transcendental reduction that allows us to reach beyond horizontal intentionality into the structures of consciousness’; and finally the third reduction that can be called ‘cultural’ and which intends to discover a ‘historical self-formation of humanity’ (1996, pp. 88–89; p. 128; p. 169).
- 7.
Welton calls the thus situated object ‘a unity of horizontal and vertical constitution’ (2000, p. 171).
- 8.
Sokolowski elaborates: ‘Once we have gone through exact essences to get to functional relationships, we do not leave ideal forms entirely behind’ (1993, p. 105).
- 9.
I give an involved description of generativity in Chap. 6.
- 10.
Sokolowski insists that the Husserlian life-world is ‘a world that conditions all experience through the network of a priori structures’ (1974, pp. 100–101).
- 11.
According to Landgrebe, there is always ‘a social plurality within the life-world’ (1981, p. 133).
- 12.
Tengelyi attempts to separate sensuous and categorial object, attributing to the latter dispositional sense, which ‘refers to an event or a process’ (2004, p. 2). Categorial object allows us to see ‘something as something else’ as compared to seeing ‘something as its feature,’ for example.
- 13.
I must note that Husserl is hesitant about using the term ‘culture.’ He uses it extremely rarely in his main corpus; however, judging by the general usage of the term ‘community,’ it appears to be inclusive of ‘culture’ in most contexts but especially in Husserl’s later works, where it becomes an operational term.
- 14.
I understand ‘exemplar’ as a singular case that is illustrative of the culture that produces by disclosing what Ragin and Becker call ‘central subject problems’ (1992, p. 61).
- 15.
- 16.
Here, we can find yet another link between phenomenology and ethnomethodology. Thus, according to Renn, communication, albeit understood differently, was an operational term for both phenomenology in the face of Schütz and ethnomethodological pragmatism in the face of Levinson (2006, pp. 6–12). Moreover, both approaches privileged interaction as a starting point for any investigation of social order.
- 17.
In his critique of Parsons , Turner notices that the notion of ‘system’ espoused by Parsons ‘was outdated as it did not take into account space and time and was for all practical purposes Newtonian, while the relation to embodiment remained Cartesian’ (2001, p. 85).
- 18.
An attempt to radicalize microsociology was made by Collins (2004).
- 19.
According to Gumpertz, ‘the major goal of conversation analysis is to show how the essentially social orderliness of even the simplest, most casual exchanges is produced, by focusing on the “methods” conversationalists themselves employ in managing verbal exchanges’ (1999, pp. 457–458).
- 20.
For the original discussion on the subject of micro-macro relations, see Alexander et al. (1987).
- 21.
This is not to say that everyone believes in the success of ‘bracketing’ performed by conversation analysis in order to exclude theory from interpretation or present their data for analysis. For a pointed review of EM/CA’s alleged ‘shortcomings,’ see Bogen (1992).
- 22.
For more on the notion of ‘frame’ as it is used in discourse analysis, see Tannen (1993).
- 23.
There is enough evidence to suggest that one can identify a genetic approach with the general strand of interactionism largely on account of Goffman , who viewed the world as ‘a dynamic intersection of appearances and messages, social actors and institutions,’ according to Atkinson and Housley (2003, p. 12).
- 24.
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Kozin, A.V. (2018). Empirical Phenomenology for the Study of Consecutive Interpreting. In: Consecutive Interpreting. Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61726-8_3
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