A Model For The Construction of Conversational Common Ground

Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 12731300
www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma
A model for the construction of conversational

common ground in interpreted discourse
Brad Davidson*
649 15th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94118, USA
Received 28 May 2000; received in revised form 14 January 2002
Abstract
This article examines the role of the interpreters in cross-linguistic discourse, arguing that
earlier analyses of their functions as voiceboxes or mere instruments of linguistic conversion
do not adequately describe the processes by which linguistic common ground is constructed
between speakers of dierent languages (Clark, Herbert H., 1992. Arenas of Language Use.
University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Clark, Herbert H., 1996. Using Language Cambridge
Uniiversity Press, Cambridge). Central to this analysis is the notion that the interpreter must
be engaged in the (re)construction of contextually relevant meaning (Wadensjo, Cecilia, 1998.
Interpreting as Interaction. Longman, London and New York). These ndings are demonstrated through the development of a model that accounts for all possible turn-types within
interpreted discourse, and the application of this model to several stretches of naturally
occurring interpreted medical discourse. # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Interpreting; Discourse analysis; Sociolinguistics; Cross-cultural communication;
Social interaction
1. Introduction
Clark (1992, 1996) describes conversation as an opportunistic endeavor, in
which two or more participants in a discourse work together to towards achieving
common goals by constructing, as best they can, a reciprocally held common store
of information, the conversational common ground. In this article I outline a
heuristic for the mechanisms by which such common ground is, and is not, constructed
* Tel.: +1-415-752-2629; fax: +1-415-752-3532.

E-mail address: davidson@csli.stanford.edu
0378-2166/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S0378-2166(02)00025-5
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B. Davidson / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 12731300
when two speakers do not share a language in common, and must resort to conversing through an interpreter. The principal ndings are that:
(1) the interpreter must be viewed as one of the opportunistic participants of
the discourse, and cannot be viewed as a mere activator (Clark, 1996) or
initiator (Goman, 1981) of anothers speech; and
(2) the common diculty in conversing through an interpreter is based largely in
the diculty in establishing reciprocity of understanding between the primary
interlocutors in the discourse.
To demonstrate these ndings, I will rst address briey how speakers achieve
reciprocity and construct common ground in the same-language discourse, and then
will present a model of interpreting that takes into account these facts about how
conversations work. What is important about this model is its ability, not only to
account theoretically for the turn-dependent processes for constructing meaning across
languages, but also to uncover, when applied to naturally occurring interpreted discourse, regular patterns of behavior between interpreters and their interlocutors. These
in turn allow us to examine both what interpreters are doing within the discourse and
also how their actions aect the course and content of that discourse. Finally, I will
discuss the implications of this model for studies of interpretation specically and
for discourse studies generally, and suggest where it might apply usefully to the larger study of interpretation of discourse, as both a historical and a political act.
2. Background and data

The study of discourse processes (that is, the ways in which speakers and hearers
construct meaning through verbal interaction) in interpretation is a eld that is only
beginning to be adequately addressed (Davidson, 1998; Roy, 1999; Wadensjo, 1998).
For the most part, studies of interpretation and translation have ignored discourse
as a eld of study, and instead have focused on written texts or monologues; that is,
they have focused on the diculty in replicating various forms of meaning in utterances (semantic, pragmatic, stylistic, etc.) or reproducing the intended eects of
utterances upon hearers, without addressing the interpretation of discourse, or
merely glossing it as the consecutive interpretation of single utterances (Alexieva,
1990; Barik, 1973, 1975; Bendix, 1988; Calzada Perez, 1993; Cartellieri, 1983; Nicholson, 1992; Seleskovitch, 1978; Snell Hornby, 1988; Weber, 1984, among others).
Students of discourse, for their part, have glossed in passing, if at all, the role of
the interpreter in discourse as that of a talking head inserted between the two
primary interlocutors (Clark, 1992, 1996; Goman, 1981; Hymes, 1972). Interpreted
discourse has been viewed, structurally, as a trivially modied version of same-language discourse; the analyses of this form of discourse, such as they are, have
assumed that the interpreter is not engaged meaningfully in the conversation, but is
rather a type of linguistic instrument through which the real speakers communicate.
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As previous researchers have shown, however (cf. Roy, 1999; Wadensjo, 1998),
the interpretation of discourse is neither the mere process of consecutive
interpretation of monologues, nor is it the work of a linguistic parrot. Interpreters
are speaking agents who are critically engaged in the process of making meaningful utterances that elicit the intended response from, or have the intended eect
upon, the hearer, not a simple or thoughtless task. One can not always, as does
Goman (1981), easily separate the speaker, that is, one who is formulating
meaningful utterances, from the initiator, that is, one who serves as a mere voicebox or parrot, without adding or subtracting meaning. Hymes (1972) example
of the Kings messenger is a possible counter to this claim, but the situation is
fundamentally dierent here: the repetition by the messenger is formulaic, the
repeated utterance is in the same language as the original, and there is no reply.
The Kings messenger is engaged in a monolingual monologue, not a bilingual
conversation.
The reason for failure of analyses of interpreted discourse that are based on a
model of discrete, non-sequential utterances is that they ignore those aspects of discourse processing that have been central to the analysis of same-language discourse,
which are:
(1) speakers and listeners are equally engaged in the ongoing process of constructing conversational meaning, and
(2) in order to negotiate and capture the meaning of an utterance produced
within an ongoing discourse, one must be a participant in the discourse itself.
If one does not fulll the requirements of (2) as an active participant in the discourse, one is reduced to the status of an overhearer, a status which has been
shown to lead to a progressively diminished understanding of what is being said as
the discourse progresses (Clark, 1992, 1996). Interpreters who are reduced to the
status of overhearers, then, cannot interpret very well, because what they are interpreting will become progressively more opaque, and one cannot interpret what one
does not understand.
The data for this discussion were collected during six months of ethnographic
eldwork at a multilingual outpatient clinic at a large, public county hospital in
Northern California (see Davidson, 1998 for details). Because of this, all of the
examples cited will come from a specic form of interpreted speech, that is, crosslinguistic diagnostic medical interviews. It could be truthfully said that medical discourse is itself a specialized form of communication (cf. Cicourel, 1983; Kleinman,
1988; Mishler, 1984; West, 1984; Wodak, 1996, among others); as such, ndings
based upon this form are not necessarily generalizable to the wider scope of interpreted discourses. It is important to note, however, that the interpretation of discourse happens for a reason (cf. Rafael, 1993). The overwhelming majority of
modern-day situations in which interpreters are called upon to exercise their oces
deal with institutional or explicitly dened, goal-oriented discourses, such as courtroom discourse (Berk-Seligson, 1990; Edwards, 1995; Hewitt, 1995) or nancial
negotiations (cf. Seleskovitch, 1978).
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To understand what is being said, then, an interpreter must understand rst why it
is being said. This is true for studies of interpretation as well. To understand what
the interpreter is doing when interpreting one needs to understand why, in this
situation, he or she is doing it (Davidson, 2000, 2001; Wadensjo, 1998). There must
be goals to be achieved by the verbal interaction, even if the goals are as vague as
establishing contact, or no interpreter would be used at all.
Interpretation can, in this view, be said to be the linguistic mediation of social
interaction. While medical discourse is a specic form of institutional interaction,
the patterns of cross-linguistic communication that take place are determined only
in part by this institutional context. The discourse processes that are described in
this article reect a much deeper level of linguistic action, and as such they are an
attempt to describe a universal fact about interpreting, which is that it must follow
certain conversational rules if it is to be carried out at all. Interpreters can interpret
in many dierent ways, but they cannot interpret by simply saying whatever comes
into their minds at any given moment. They must participate in the conversation, to
the degree possible, in order to interpret successfully, and their participation is constrained by rules of human communication and comprehension. Therefore, the
possible patterns of communication that are described will hold for any interpreted
conversation, and I will use the examples of naturally-occurring interpreted medical
discourse to illustrate larger truths about the nature of interpretation, the role of the
interpreter, and the course of interpreted discourse itself.
3. Conversational processes in same-language discourse

When one examines naturally occurring conversational data, a central question
that arises is, how exactly do speakers and hearers make sense of utterances, and how
do strings of utterance-turns, or discourses, proceed? To this question is added
another: how does one convey ideas in a comprehensible manner, so that they make
sense in isolation and in sequence (Brown and Yule, 1983; Garnkel, 1967; Goman,
1981, among others)? Clark (1992: xixiii) outlines what he calls an action tradition
in the study of language, a tradition which looks at language use in context and of
which the study of discourse processes is an integral component (Clark, 1992). Central to the action tradition is the idea that speech reception is as important as speech
production; speakers and hearers, in action analysis, are given equal importance, and
conversation is seen as primarily a form of social collaboration (cf. Hanks, 1996).
For Clark, the collaborative aspect of an action view of discourse may be summed
up (though not exhaustively) in the following list of three properties.
(1) The participants in a conversation work together against a background of
shared information ([...]called common ground).
(2) As the discourse proceeds, the participants accumulate shared information by
adding to it with each utterance.
(3) Speakers design their utterances so that their addressees can readily identify
what is to be added to that common ground. (Clark, 1992: 45).
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Speakers construct conversational common ground by rst presenting new information, which is then accepted by the hearer, and this acceptance is in turn
acknowledged by the rst speaker.1 Only when all three conversational moves have
occurred can a contribution be said to have been achieved in the discourse, and
assimilated into the conversational common ground. Step 3, acknowledgment, does
not need to be in the form of an explicit acceptance of the presented utterance.
Acceptance and acknowledgement may take the form of relevance to the prior
utterance (Sacks et al., 1974), which shows that the hearer (now speaker) has
assimilated the prior utterance. Strings of these relevant utterances form the growing
conversational common ground, the context for the immediate response and for
all of the following utterances in the discourse.
There is one nal, relevant piece in this analysis. The notion of a common ground
begs the question, just how common is common ground between participants? To
allow for the very real dierences in how the meanings of utterances are understood
by participants in the discourse, Clark, in his principle of mutual responsibility,
introduces the concept of a conversational criterion:
Principle of mutual responsibility. The participants in a conversation try to
establish, roughly by the initiation of each new contribution, the mutual belief
that listeners have understood what the speaker meant in the last utterance to a
criterion sucient for current purposes... (Clark, 1992: 139; italics added)
This criterion allows speakers and hearers to continue their discourse even when
they are unsure if the other shares exactly the same view of the common ground that
is being constructed, as long as both are satised that they share a view that is
similar enough for current purposes. While current purposes may be admittedly vague for speakers and hearers, and also as a descriptor, it provides an analytic
tool that helps explain why some conversations seem to be full of overt acknowledgment turns, while others seem virtually devoid of them. As we will see in the
interpreted excerpts below, acknowledgment or acceptance turns are not easily
found or identied. This is a crucial diculty for conversing across languages.
4. A simple action model of interpreting discourse

We will turn now to the central issue of this article, the analysis of the processes of
the construction of conversational common ground and the negotiation of meaning
in interpreted discourse. Most manuals of interpreting tend to assume that the main
problems facing an interpreter are those of linguistic (semantic) representation (cf.
Barik, 1973, 1975; Kussmaul, 1995; Nicholson, 1992; Seleskovitch, 1978; Weber,
1984). It is widely, possibly universally, accepted that it is impossible to translate an
utterance or a text from one language exactly into another; the dierent relationships between the words and meanings in dierent languages, as well as the dierent
1
It should be noted here that acceptance is not the same as agreement.
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social and historical facts surrounding each communicative code, prevent this
(Bendix, 1988; Berk-Seligson, 1990; Nicholson, 1992; Rafael, 1993; Roy, 1999;
Wadensjo, 1998).
The interpreter is faced, then, with the inescapable dilemma of choosing between
quality of interpreting and quantity of interpreting (Cartellieri, 1983). That is to
say, interpreters and translators are constantly choosing which part of a message (a
text, an utterance,...), which of the many possible aspects of language, is to be given
primacy in a translation or interpretation, and the basis of this choice is largely
determined by the perceived goals of the communication. The choice of whether
alliteration is more important than meter, or literality (morpho-semantic faithfulness) more important than conceptual delity (what Adair et al., 1958 refer to as
conceptual transfer), will be determined by what the text or talk is intended to do.
Essentially, the problems are dialogic in nature: how to inspire the exact same reaction, the exact same type and moment of comprehension, in a reader/hearer whose
world and worldview are shaped by a dierent series of linguistic and social correlations than those initially formulated in another language by the original author,
working within the original social and linguistic context?
There is a second set of problems, however, that is only recently beginning to be
addressed. Interpreting conversations requires, as Roy (1999) points out, the negotiation of turn-taking as well as the negotiation of meaning. I would argue, as might
others (cf. Boden and Zimmerman, 1991; Moerman, 1988; Ochs et al., 1996; Psathas, 1995), that the two processes, the negotiation of turn-taking and the negotiation of meaning, are inseparable. But while interpreting for conferences, or
translating texts, is implicitly dialogic, interpreting conversations is both implicitly
and overtly so. Most theories of interpreting are concerned with the interpretation
of monologues, and are not interested in dialogue. They, therefore, resort to a
combination of, on the one hand, product-oriented approaches to the analysis of
language use (that is, interpretation as the one-way conversion from one language or
code to another) and process-oriented approaches on the other (interpretation as the
product of the implicit dialogue between the interpreter and the message, and
between the recipient of the newly coded message and the message itself). The
interpretation if discourse is all of this, and more.
To make this point more clearly, it is worth returning to the analysis of the function of adjacent utterances in same-language conversation. One can turn to the work
of Conversation Analysis, which concerns itself with the creation of conversational
meaning through the sequential ordering of turns-at-talk. Starting with Sacks et al.
(1974), there has been an approach that holds that conversations progress as a
sequence of consecutive turns, in the course of which speakers negotiate and convey
linguistic and meta-linguistic information. A modied version of this analysis is
shown in Fig. 1.
Each of the utterances (A)(D) represents a turn-at-talk, numbered (14). These
turns can be of any sort, but given the conditions set on the acceptance of utterances that were discussed earlier, the turns will all have one thing in common: to be
felicitous, they will address the prior utterance, and add to the dialogue that is
unfolding between Speakers 1 and 2. That is to say, these turns can be overt accep-
1279
tances of prior utterances, or responses that contain tacit acceptance or acknowledgment, in the form of relevance, to prior utterances, but each pair of adjacent
utterances (AB, BC, CD) will contain an utterance and its response; the latter
signals that the former has been accepted into the discourse as part of the conversational common ground, to varying degrees of success. Here we have, then, in
admittedly simplied form, a basic linear model of how same-language communication works.2
To see how conversational common ground might be constructed in interpreted
discourse, we will need to construct a similar model that shows us how information
is conveyed through speakers contributions during their sequentially-ordered turnsat-talk. Let us assume for the moment, as do many analyses of conversational
interpreting, that the act of interpretation is the act of simply repeating, in a new
language, what has already been said. Fig. 2, below, presents a graphic representation of the interpreted equivalent of Fig. 1.
Notice in Fig. 2 that, although there are only three speakers, there are four rows in
the speaker column. This is in order to accommodate the fact that the interpreter
within the conversation will produce utterances in two languages, one of which is
comprehensible to Speaker 1, the other to Speaker 2.
This representational practice will continue throughout this article for all further
graphic representations of interpreted discourse. The capital letters (A and B)
represent the utterance, with all its semantic, pragmatic, stylistic, etc. aspects of the
speakers contribution to the discourse; the Greek letters ( and ) represent the
language in which these conversational oerings are uttered. As we will see below,
Fig. 1. Graphic representation of turns-at-talk in same-language discourse.
Fig. 2. Turns-at-talk in interpreted discoursea basic model.

2
It is not my intent here to uniquely represent turns-at-talk as non-overlapping, immediately temporally adjacent utterances; for the purposes of this article, however, this simplied model will suce.
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this is the type of model implied by Clark (1996), Goman (1981), and Hymes
(1972), among others, when they posit the role of the interpreter as that of conveyor
of content in a new form.
This model is not, however, adequate for representing interpreted discourse, and
an examination of naturally-occurring interpreted data will reveal few, if any, stretches of talk that resemble this ideal. Upon closer examination, there are three problems with this model, which will prove fatal to the model itself and which will
require the construction of a new, more complex model capable of dealing with
actual interpreted data. They are:
(1) there is no way of determining, from this simplied model, the functional
nature of cross-linguistic turns-at-talk;
(2) in the model, interpreters are relegated to the status of overhearers;
(3) the model does not take into account the diculty in monitoring the comprehension of hearers across languages, which in turn threatens the normal
construction of conversational common ground.
We will take each of these issues in turn.
The rst problem is one of false analogy: while the functional nature of adjacent
same-language utterances in Fig. 1 is clear, the (multi)functions of the interpreted
turns in Fig. 2 are not clear. More precisely, in the same-language model in Fig. 1,
each adjacent turn-at-talk is addressed to the prior utterance, whereas in Fig. 2 it is
clear that the discrete adjacent turns (14) are not all addressed to the prior utterance.
This is true especially of those turns taken by the interpreter, turns (2) and (4),
which do not construct common ground in the same way as adjacent utterances in
same-language discourse, even though they occur consecutively in the conversation.
This is because they are not understandable, by the prior speaker, as replies to the
content of the prior utterance: indeed, they are incomprehensible to the prior
speaker. They are presumed to be an echo of what was said already, and are aimed
away from the prior speaker; the only response back to the prior speaker is the acting out of the implicit command interpret this utterance. The common ground is
not being formed on a turn-by-turn basis, because the turns cannot be seen as
replies. What, then, is a correct functional analysis of the turns?
One could argue that these turns are really best analyzed as parts of larger turns,
or meta-turns: as the graphic representation suggests, these would be turn (1) and
(2) and turn (3) and (4), analogous to turns (1) and (2), respectively, in Fig. 1.
However, the unfortunate implication provided by this analysis of structural metaturns is that the interpreter and the speaker whose utterance is being interpreted
form a symbiotic unit capable of joint production and comprehension of utterances,
which they are not. This leads to the second issue.
The second problem with the turn structure as outlined in Fig. 2 is that, in this
model, the interpreter is occupying a position that could be classied as the animator (but not the author or principal) in Gomans taxonomic grid (1981:
226), or the spokesman/sender (but not the source/addresser) in Hymes (1972:
6061) classicatory scheme of participants, itself part of the larger, well-known
1281
mnemonic SPEAKING.3 That is to say, interpreters are mere producers of words,

not meanings or intentions, relaying words that are not their own, and which are
understood as emanating from another source. They are, in eect, voiceboxes, and
interpretees are encouraged to believe that the interpreter is not saying anything, if
by saying one means generating meaning by expressing ones own ideas; the
translator is merely echoing.4 Interpreters do not accept utterances; they do not
display comprehension, or incomprehension for that matter, because their utterances are not directed back at the prior speaker, who is the only person able to judge
the relevance of the interpreters speech. If, however, interpreters acts in the way
shown in Fig. 2, they will understand less and less about the discourse as it continues
(and so too, consequently, will their interpretees).
This is due to two factors. The rst is that neither speaker in the discourse is able
to understand the reformulations of their utterances, which means they are unable
to check and correct any obvious misunderstandings or misrepresentations of their
words. In other words, if the interpreter says kidney when the interpretee said
spleen, or if the interpreter confuses or is forced by dierences in linguistic structure to choose between if x happens and when x happens, there is no way for
the interpretee to check this error or correct it. As inevitable minor dierences
accumulate, the discourse becomes less about common ground and more about guring out what it is the participants are talking about at all.
The second factor is that, for their part, interpreters have no clear turn in which to
question a prior statement. If they misunderstand, or simply dont hear, what has
been said, they have no way of stepping out of the role of echo and asking a metadiscursive what? or can you repeat that? or even I dont understand. The model
in Fig. 2 does not allow for these types of turns; the interpreter hears an utterance,
relays it, and then waits for the answer before resuming the interpretation. While this
pattern of behavior is legally required in some instances, specically courtroom settings, this relegation of interpreters to mere vocalizers leaves them outside of the discourse, making their job more complicated and the interpreters less able to carry out
their responsibilities eectively (Berk-Seligson, 1990; Edwards, 1995; Hewitt, 1995).
The position of interpreters in this model is one of overhearers (Clark, 1992;
Clark and Schober, 1989). Utterances are neither designed for their benet nor are
they able to have their misunderstandings recognized and then made right: they are
able to listen to the conversation, but are not sanctioned, or able, to participate in it.
Without a sanctioned participatory role, interpreters would, and often do, have a
dicult time following the conversation they are interpreting. It is worth citing
Clarks exact words at length here:
Addressees and overhearers are forced to adhere to very dierent criteria for
understanding. Addressees can always understand as well as they need to.
3
Setting and Scene; Participants; Ends; Act sequence; Key; Instrumentalities; Norms; Genre.
This is exactly the model of interpreting that physicians and judges are espousing when they express
the desire for interpreters to be uninstrusive, and to restrict their input so that they are nothing more than
input-output machines (Berk-Seligson, 1990).
4
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Overhearers can only ever understand as well as they are able to- and that may
not be very well at all. The reason is that addressees are intended to recognize
the speakers intentions. Overhearers can only conjecture about them. (1992:
105106.
If interpreters cannot participate in the conversation, they cannot be expected to
understand everything that has been said, and if they cannot understand what has
been said, how can they repeat it with accuracy? One could refer to a speech-generation machine hooked up to a keyboard, such as that used by the British physicist
Stephen Hawkings, as a voicebox, because the machine can truly be said not to
engage in understanding the message it is conveying. But interpreters are not
machines, and they make sense of what is said in a uniquely human way, just as do
the conversational participants for whom they are interpreting.
The third problem with the model of interpreted discourse in Fig. 2 is the virtual
equivalence of the utterances A() to A(), and B() and B(), that is implied by
it. The utterances are packages, the contents of which remain the same even after
conversion from one language to another. That is to say, the model presumes that
the interpreters repetitions of the interpretees contributions to the discourse are
notationally identical in content, if not in linguistic form [or rather, they have
changed in form, from language () to language (), but have not changed in content].
However, dierences in linguistic form necessarily lead to dierences in content
(cf. Calzada Perez, 1993). This is a truism, both in linguistics and in interpreting.
There is also another, more critical diculty, not as rmly rooted in the nature of
linguistic codes themselves, that prevents the utterances from being identical, one
that is related to the criterion of sucient mutual belief that was mentioned earlier. This criterion was dened as being sucient for current conversational purposes. It was what allowed participants in a discourse to continue in the process of
constructing common ground without having to spend undue amounts of time
making sure that their respective views of the common ground so constructed were
exactly the same. In other words, conversations move forward when participants feel
that they understand each other well enough for current purposes.
For same-language discourse, this means that, when Speaker 1 says (A), Speaker 2
understands, not (A), but some related variant of (A), let us say (A0 ). The prime
after (A0 ) denotes that it is dierent from the original (A). These dierences may
stem from any number of possible sources; in any way that humans can interpret the
same input dierently, they can interpret linguistic inputs dierently. What is crucial
here is not what is dierent in Speaker 1 and Speaker 2s views of what (A/A0 ) is, but
rather that there is a dierence, and that that dierence is a typical part of conversation. This is a departure from the traditional Saussurean view of conversation
as establishing perfectly symmetrical cognitive representations in the minds of both
participants in the discourse; this perfect symmetry is exactly what Clark is challenging with his notion of the conversational criterion. Let us say, then, that, by denition, (A0 ) is similar enough to (A) that by the criterion of sucient mutual belief
both participants are satised, and move on.
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Looking again at Fig. 2, we see that in turn 1 Speaker 1 produces A(). In turn 2
the interpreter, having supposedly understood A() as (A) produced in language
(), simply repeats (A), or that immutable part of (A) that is transferable to language (), as A(). But given our model, it is actually more precise to say that the
interpreter has understood, not A(), but A0 (), and the interpreter will thus produce, in turn 2, A0 (). Moving forward, if the interpreter produces A0 (), Speaker 2
will understand, not A0 (), but rather A00 ().
Crucially, what Speaker 2 understands, (A00 ), may be too dierent from (A) to be
acceptable to a criterion sucient for Speaker 1s present conversational purposes.
Speaker 1 will never know either way, for two reasons. The rst reason is the lack of
direct conversational access to Speaker 2s reply, meaning that Speaker 1 cannot, as
with the interpreters turn, infer comprehension from the replys relevance. The second is the fact that Speaker 2s reply will undergo the same incremental shift in
meaning while being conveyed, through the interpreter, to Speaker 1.
In other words, the problem of exactness in interpretation is not (merely) a problem of linguistic representation, but also of the degree to which common ground
is in fact identiably common. It is likely that Speaker 1 may still assume that
Speaker 2 understands (A), and also assume that the two both hold this as conversational common ground; Speaker 2 will assume that Speaker 1 understands (A00 ), and
holds it as common ground. These divergent views of the common ground are what
form the context for all subsequent talk. As the dialogue progresses, the accumulation
of misconceptions and misunderstanding about what exactly the common ground is
means that there may be a growing misunderstanding of the context of talk. Thus,
what is being talked about is not necessarily shared information.
There are, in sum, three problems with interpreted speech as represented in the
model depicted in Fig. 2. First, the model makes no distinction regarding the specic
nature of interpreted turns, not all of which can be considered to be analogous to
same-language turns at talk. Second, the model assumes interpreters will understand
contributions without having to engage in the conversation. Finally, it ignores the
magnication of misunderstanding that happens when turns-at-talk are taken
through an interpreter, due to the opacity of the common ground being constructed.
A new model will need to be constructed to accurately depict, and predict, the nature of interpreted discourse.
5. A complex action model of interpreting discourse

We have seen that same-language discourse and interpreted discourse have, at
their core, very dierent structures of turn taking, even if the turns in both forms of
discourse are made up of discrete, consecutive speaker contributions to an ongoing
conversation. We have also seen that the functions performed by these turns are
somewhat dierent in the two modes of conversation. In order for an action-oriented model of interpreted discourse to satisfactorily account for the number and types
of turns needed to achieve reciprocity within the conversation, it will need to satisfy
the following two stipulations.
1284
1. Any working model of interpreted discourse must take into account the fact
that participants in the discourse are not passive recipients of meaningful
utterances, but rather agents actively involved in the co-construction of these
meanings.
2. Any working model of interpreted discourse must recognize that there is not
a singular conversational common ground being constructed, but rather two
separate sets of common ground, between the interpreter and each of the two
interpretees.
As always, these stipulations are presented as necessary conditions for a model of
interpreted discourse, not of the interpretation of monologues or of the translation
of texts. These stipulations are discourse processual. Fig. 3, below, represents a
model that attempts to satisfy these stipulations.
This model, the second representation of turn-taking in an action-view of interpreted discourse outlined so far, addresses all of the shortcomings that were shown
to exist in the rst model. It is less complicated than it seems: in eect, it is simply
the interpreted equivalent of the same-language pair of adjacent utterances,
Speaker 1 says A; Speaker 2 says B, with room provided for the interpreters
presence in the discourse. What complicates the second model is what was missing
from the rst: an attempt to account for how speakers, including the interpreter,
achieve reciprocity in conversation, and to specify the linguistic actions that they
must take to achieve it.
There are 10 turns in the model, broken into three sets of larger meta-turns, whose
representational features will be explained below.
The turns that are contained within a single-bordered box (turns 14 and 710)
represent the meta-turns that were analyzed in the discussion of Fig. 2; that is,
they represent the collection of turns necessary for a speakers contribution to the
discourse to be heard by the other interpretee. These turns, taken as a whole, are
what is usually thought of as interpreting; the end result of these meta-turns is the
conversion of an utterance from one language to another.
The turns set inside double-bordered boxes (turns 47, and also turns 1 and 10)
represent turns in which the actual content of the message that will eventually be
interpreted is being assessed and incorporated into the discourse. That is, they
represent same-language interactions between the interpreter and one of the interpretees, and enable the construction of common ground between the interpreter and
Fig. 3. Turns-at-talk in interpreted discoursethe collaborative model.
1285
the interpretee. They are stretches of same-language discourse, which typically do not
gure in analyses of interpreted conversation. Turns 1 and 10 represent the end of a
same-language discussion and the beginning of another; while turn 1 represents the
conclusion of one same-language conversation between the interpreter and Speaker
1, turn 10 represents the beginning of a new one between these same speakers.
Finally, the shaded boxes (turns 4 and 10) represent what I will call liminal
turns, in that they occupy a unique position within the interpreted dialogue. Not
only do they signal either the end of same-language conversation and the beginning
of interpretation, or vice-versa; they also represent a switch from one language to
another. As we shall see, the interpreter often marks these turns with the use of
phrases and expressions that are comprehensible in both languages. All of these
features will be discussed below.
The same-language turns, those taken between Speakers 1 and 2 and the interpreter (turns in parentheses: turns 23, 56, and 89) are optional. The interpreter
and interpretee may discuss what has been said, or may not. This is determined by
the interpreterif he or she converts what has been said without comment, then
these turns have been skipped. However, these turns, while optional in interpreted
discourse, are also optionally recursive, in that they may stretch from two turns into
20 or more as the interpreter and the speaker work to construct common ground
and achieve some contribution to their discourse.
Returning to the three sets of turns exhibited in Fig. 3, we see that the rst set,
turns (14), is essentially a mini-dialogue between Speaker 1 and the Interpreter,
identical in form to the same-language exchange represented in Fig. 1. In turn (1),
Speaker 1 utters A, in language (). In turn (2), the interpreter actively engages
Speaker 1, in order to ensure comprehension of Speaker 1s attempted contribution
to the discourse. In turn (3) Speaker 1 replies to the interpreter. At this point
Speaker 1s contribution has been achieved, and in turn (4) the Interpreter then
conveys, as closely as language and the interpreters understanding allow [that is, as
A0 ()], the message A() originally conveyed by Speaker 1 in turn (1).
Turn (4) is interesting, and poses a problem. On the one hand, turn (4) may be
considered to be part of the rst meta-turn, in that it is intended to be the closest
approximation possible, in meaning and reception, to the message expressed by
Speaker 1 in turn (1). On the other hand, it is unintelligible to Speaker 1, and as such
is not the same type of consecutive, decipherably relevant adjacent turn that turns
(13) represent sequentially to each other. For this reason, turn (4) is a pivotal turn,
one which exists within the structure of both the rst meta-turn and the second,
turns (47). We will return to the issue of these pivotal, or liminal, turns below, as
they form a critical part of interpreted discourse, occupying as they do a potentially
nebulous region, not only between sets of speakers, but also between languages as
well.
The second meta-turn, represented by the turns surrounded by a double-border, is
made up of a sequence between the interpreter and Speaker 2 in which the interpreter attempts to convey (A0 ), his or her understanding of Speaker 1s contribution
(A), to Speaker 2, in language (). The turns (5 and 6) are analogous to turns (2 and
3) in the rst meta-turn; they are optional, but their possible presence is required to
1286
allow the interpreter and Speaker 2 to collaborate in the achievement of the conversational oering. Once Speaker 2 and the interpreter are satised that Speaker 2
shares the common ground (A0 ), that is, once the interpreter and Speaker 2 have
achieved the interpreters (ostensibly, Speaker 1s) contribution to the discourse and
have met a criterion sucient for present purposes, and once Speaker 2 understands (A00 ), then Speaker 2 responds with B() in turn (7).
What has happened, up to the completion of turn (6) in the model, is that there
have been two dialogues, representing the co-construction of two sets of common
ground between two sets of speakers: the common ground [A()-A0 ()] between
Speaker 1 and the interpreter, and the common ground [A0 ()-A00 ()] between the
interpreter and Speaker 2. Speaker 2s contribution B() in turn (7) in the collaborative model represents, on a meta-structural level, the response to Speaker 1s
utterance A() in turn (1). Speaker 2 must now produce, and Speaker 1 must
receive, a contribution that is recognizably and decipherably related to Speaker 1s
contribution, in this case, some form of the original B().
Notice also that it is the interpreter who is charged with the responsibility for
determining both the criterion of mutual belief, that is, what the relevant threshold of accuracy in reciprocity will be, and also with judging that it has been met.
Speakers 1 and 2 can only impart information concerning their intentions regarding
this criterion and its evaluation, but they cannot directly determine this criterion,
nor judge if it is being met, because they cannot judge the others contribution
directly. Again, one aspect of speaking through an interpreter is the interpretees
unavoidable loss of control over the course and content of their discourse.
From turn (7) to turn (10), Speaker 2 and the interpreter jointly achieve Speaker
2s contribution B() to the discourse, ending up with a shared common ground of
[B()-B0 ()], which the interpreter then conveys as B0 (). This third meta-turn is
analogous to the rst meta-turn, turns (14). Notice again that turn (10) represents a
frontier between the interpreters linguistic engagement with Speaker 2 and the
interpreters (presumably imminent) engagement with Speaker 1, just as turn (4)
represents the opposite side of the same boundary. What happens after turn (10), as
assumed by the model, is that the interpreter and Speaker 1 achieve the Interpreters
contribution [B0 ()-B00 ()], to which Speaker 1 eventually will add C(), analogous,
in terms of conversational function within the model, to A().
Turns (4) and (10) represent the boundary between languages () and (). These
boundary turns are frequently marked by the use of words that are bivalent, to
use Woolards (1998) terminology; that is, words that have meaning in both languages, and which are ambiguously classed as belonging to both codes of communication (such as the nearly ubiquitous okay, or paralinguistic expressions such as
uh-huh or mm). Excerpt 1, below, allows us to examine more closely the exact
nature of these liminal turns, and also to examine how well the collaborative model
of interpreted discourse works in practice.
The data that are presented in Excerpt 1 are taken from an actual stretch of
interpreted medical discourse. Both the patient and the physician are male; the
patient is a Spanish-speaking, elderly rural immigrant, the physician a middle-aged
Anglo. The interpreter, a native Spanish-speaking female who immigrated to the
1287
US from an urban environment, is roughly the same age as the physician. The
patients elderly sister has accompanied the patient on this visit, and I was also present during this interaction; however, she and I both remained silent throughout the
interview:
Excerpt 1:
Int.
343
Pt.
344
Int.
345
Pt.
346
347
348
349
350
351
Int.
Pt.
352
353
354
355
356
357
Int.
342
Pt.
Are you taking an aspirin a day?

Esta tomando la aspirina?
Are you taking the aspirin?
[ cual?-]
[which?-]
[ Una] aspirina cada da?
[One] aspirin every day?
Cual aspirina?
What aspirin?
No esta tomando
[aspirina...?]
Youre not taking
[aspirin...?]
[Mire que,] ya que vine,
[Look its that], since I came,
que,
since,
que me mando la xx,
since he sent me to the xx.
all se me quedaron las medicinas.
I left my medicines there.
Que me dio el.
That he gave me.
O:
[h.]
[Yo no se] si haba aspirina.
[I dont know] if there was aspirin.
Okay.
Okay.
He left his things in the hospital, (very quiet, to D)
He left his medications behind.
So he doesnt know whether aspirin was there or what,
but this is the only thing that hes [taking.]
?
341
Int.
Allright.
Dr.
(3 seconds)
337
338
339
340
Comparing the turns-at-talk in Excerpt 1 to those outlined in Fig. 3 we nd two

things. First, all of the talk produced in Excerpt 1 ts within the structure of the
model itself; each turn at talk has a corresponding turn in the model. Second, each
turns function within the discourse is predicted and illuminated by its position
within the model. Fig. 3 represents, then, a heuristic device that describes and pre-
1288
dicts (so far) the nature of interpreted discourse and interpreted discourse processes.
The comparison of the data to the model is carried out below.
The physicians rst turn, lines 337339, would begin the interaction as turn 1, and
the content of the turn (Are you taking...?) would be represented by A(English),
where (English) instantiates the Greek letter () in our formula. The next turn,
taken by the interpreter in line 340, is analogous to turn 4, and would be represented
by A0 (Spanish). Notice that the optional turns 2 and 3 have not been taken; the
interpreter does not engage the physician in any form of dialogue concerning the
latters contribution, but rather interprets it directly. Thus there is no way for the
physician to know that the interpreter has changed his utterance in small, but still
noticeable, ways, specically changing the non-specic aspirin to the specic the
aspirin, and omitting the reference to when the aspirin is taken, in line 340.
The next turn, taken by the patient, could be designated as analogous either to
turn 5 or to turn 7, depending, in part, on whether or not the interpreter chooses to
transmit the content of the turn directly to the physician, or if she instead responds
back to the patient in Spanish. In the actual discourse, the patients contribution is
perhaps best analyzed as an unsuccessful attempt to take the oor from the interpreter, in order to respond to her question. The interpreter concurrently repeats her
rst question in a slightly dierent form; for this analysis, then, the interpreters turn
4 will be said to consist of the entire stretch from lines 340342, and the patients
attempted reply will be considered an unsuccessful initiation of the turn he takes in
line 343.5
Line 343, then, represents the patients rst unchallenged turn-at-talk, and the
content of this turn appears to be a fuller elaboration of the turn he attempted to
take in line 341. Again, this turn could be designated either as turn 5 or turn 7 in the
collaborative model, depending in part on its reception by the interpreter and her
reaction to the utterance. In this case the interpreter chooses not to convey the
utterance directly to the physician, instead engaging the patient in conversation with
a response to his contribution to the discourse (Youre not taking aspirin...?, line
344). Thus the patients rst turn in line 343 can be designated as turn 5 in the collaborative model, and its content specied as furthering the establishment of common ground and reciprocity between the interpreter and the patient, but not the
patient and the physician. The interpreters reply, in line 344, can be designated turn
6, and the content would be seen, structurally, as serving a function identical to that
of turn 5.
The patients next turn, in lines 345349, can be said to occupy the position of
turn 7 in the collaborative model, and its content designated as B(Spanish). While
the patients turn in line 343, which aspirin?, was both relevant and easily interpretable as a coherent reply to the physicians question, and thus could have been
designated as turn 7, the fact that it is not passed on to the physician precludes this
5
Alternatively, one could designate each of the turns in lines 340, 341, and 342 as separate entitles; in
this case, line 340 would represent turn 4, line 341 the patients turn 5, and line 342 turn 6 for the interpreter.
1289
analysis. Rather, it is the turn in 345349, which forms the basis of the eventual
reply that the interpreter passes on to the physician, which occupies this slot in the
model.
The interpreters turn, in line 350, can be designated as turn 8 in the collaborative
model, although one could also argue that the paralinguistic o:h does not, in and
of itself, constitute a full turn. If one chooses to call line 350 a turn, then the
patients nal turn in line 351 should be designated as turn 9 in the model; if one
chooses not to call the interpreters o:h a turn, then line 351 should be designated
as the conclusion of turn 7 in the model. The choice between these two analyses does
not seem crucial here.
The interpreters nal turn in Excerpt 1, from lines 352357, occupies the position
of turn 10 in the collaborative model, for two reasons: the rst, because it represents
a switch from Spanish to English; and the second, because its semantic content is
roughly equivalent to that of the patients utterance in turn 7, and thus may be
designated (B0 ).
Returning to the issue of the liminal nature of the turns in which the interpreter
initiates a switch from one language to another, we notice that the turn itself is
begun, in lines 352353, with the bivalent expression okay, okay. As stated earlier, these expressions are quite frequent in the discourse, at the point where the
interpreter initiates a switch from one language to another, and also from one mode
(conversational engagement) to another (interpretation). The bivalent6 expression
okay appears to be signaling, in these cases, that the interpreter has heard and
assimilated the information in the prior utterance, and that she will now begin to
transmit this information to the principal recipient. These expressions both accept
the turn into the discourse (for the benet of the immediately prior speaker), and
serve, in a linguistically transparent way, to give notice to the party who has not
been able to follow the recent discourse (because it is in a language he does not
understand) that he should now attend to the conversation. Okay, then, functions
in three ways: it signals that the interpreter has understood what the interpretee has
said; it signals that she is about to switch modes, from one in which she engages in
collaborative conversation with the interpretee to one in which she reports what has
been said by the interpretee; and it signals that, to do this, she is about to switch
languages.
I will now perform a similar analysis on the continuation of the Excerpt, starting
immediately where we left o in line 357. There are two full sets of interactions in
this Excerpt, along with the beginning of a third, that map onto the collaborative
model.
The rst set stretches from line 358 to line 379, and the second from line 380 to
line 410; the position of each of these turns within the model of interpreted discourse
is labeled in bold to the left of each turn. Notice that there is absolutely no discus-
6
Essentially, words, phases, or paralinguistic gestures that are identical or serve similar functions in
two languages; the notion is useful both for studies of interpreting and of code-switching (cf. Woolard,
1998).
1290
sion between the physician and the interpreter about the nature of the patients
reply, reported by the interpreter in line (357) in the prior Excerpt; the achievement
of the patients contribution is made without discussion on the part of the interpreter and the physician. As we shall see, the same cannot be said about the
achievement of the physicians conversational oerings to the patient, which routinely engender same-language discussions between the patient. This will be discussed
more fully below. Notice also the near-categorical use of bivalent expressions, most
notably okay, by the interpreter in all of the liminal turns:7
Excerpt 1, continued (with turns in the model signaled at left):
366
367
368
369
370
(8?)
10
**
(?)
1
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
I
P
I
D
P
D
[Okay,] this is all that hes taAllright.

Uhm.
NOW.
They TRIED to collect your urine the hospital, but they failed,
so were gonna do that again.
Okay.
TRATARON DE PEDIR UNA MUESTRA,
THEY TRIED TO ASK FOR A SAMPLE,
DE ORINA.
OF URINE.
All en el hospital pero no pudieron.
There in the hospital but they couldnt.
Ahora (va a dar?) una muestra de orina.
Now (you are going to give?) a urine sample.
S, s.
Yes, yes.
Ahorita
[xxxx]
una botella.
Right now
[xxxx]
a bottle.
[ okay?]
Ahh.
Heh-ha[haha]
[Ha-ha].
He can ll a whole,
bottle.
Okay good, allright. (speaking over generalized laughter)
Well do that, again.
Heh-heh.
Umm,
we would also, I WOULD LIKE YOU TO DECREASE,
THIS MEDICINE,
?
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
The words appearing in all capital letters represent signicant increases in volume of speech, that is,
conversational shouting: the patient is somewhat deaf.
1291
389
5
390
391
392
5
393
394
395
**
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
8/10
1
403
404
405
406
407
408
I
D
409
P
I
TO JUST AT NIGHT.
Okay.
ESTA MEDICINA, DEL FRASCO GRANDE,
THIS MEDICINE, IN THE BIG BOTTLE,
[xx]
[ Okay?]
(1 second)
SOLO SE-EN LA NOCHE SE LO VA A TOMAR (X) NADA
MAS.
ONLY- AT NIGHT YOU ARE GOING TO TAKE IT (X) NO
MORE.
SOLO EN LA NOCHE.
ONLY AT NIGHT.
Porque all dice que dos veces
[al da.]
Because here it says two times
[a day.]
[S.]
[Yes.]
Ya no [mas].
No
[longer.]
(i.e., not anymore)
[Ahora] no mas que en la
[noche.]
[Now] just at
[night.]
[SO:Lo] en la noche.=
[JU:st] at night=
=Ah-kay. Las dos?
=Ah-kay. Both?
En la noche,
[okay.]
At night,
[okay.]
[N:o].
No, no.
ESTA.
THIS ONE.
Ya.
Yeah.
Naxx=
Noxx=
=esta no mas que en la noche, okay.
=this one only at night, okay.
Okay?
THIS ONE he continues to take,
(2 seconds)
ONE twice a day.
Allright.
La, la del frasco pequenito,
The one, the one in the little bottle,
okay?
?
385
386
387
388
(5?)
4/6
382
383
384
1292
410
Esa se-se la toma DOS.

This one you-you take TWO.
All of the turns taken in this continuation of Excerpt 1 t reasonably well into the
model of interpreting outlined earlier, with two exceptions: lines 377378, and line
396. We will examine these and other turns of interest in the remainder of this section. What we will begin to see from these analyses is that, as we map consecutive
turns onto the collaborative model, a pattern of when and with whom the interpreter engages in conversation begins to emerge; that is, not only does the model
help determine the function of each of the turns taken in the interpreted discourse,
but by utilizing the model to analyze these turns we are able to make observations
about how the interpreter is interpreting, and what eect this has on the discourse.
The rst completed series of turns runs from line 358 to line 379. In this stretch of
discourse, the interpreter has not chosen to engage either interlocutor in conversation, rather sticking to a model of strict utterance-interpretation. One could make
the argument, however, that the interpreters laughter itself, in line 379, forms a type
of conversational commentary on the patients immediately prior utterance, and in
this case her laughter, coupled with that of the patient, would occupy the position of
turns 8 and 9 in the collaborative model. Inasmuch as the interpreter engages either
of her interlocutors at all, then, she engages with the patient.
The turn taken by the physician in lines 378 and 379 is interesting, for two reasons. The rst is that it is perhaps the most salient example of an overt acceptance of
an utterance into the discourse by either of the principal interlocutors, and it is not
interpreted, or addressed, by the interpreter, in any way. The second interesting fact
is that this turn itself contains three such markers of overt acceptance, one of which
(okay) is bivalent, and the other two of which (good, alright) are generally
understood by patients who speak even the most limited English. These items, then,
may have been directed at the patient himself, and may even have been understood
as a general form of conversational acceptance by him; the message contained in line
378 (Well do that, again), however, is not transparent to the patient, and is not
addressed. Here we can see an example of the diculty in achieving reciprocity of
understanding between the physician and the patient in interpreted medical interviews; in this case, the diculty stems from the fact that the interpreter simply does
not interpret the third turn (the overt acceptance of the reply) at all.
The next stretch of discourse, from lines 380 and 403, is the last that we will
examine in detail. The patients unintelligible utterance, in line 385, might perhaps
not t the prole of a full turn, as there are no contextual cues as to what he might
have said (he may have been clearing his throat). It seems safest to either not categorize the utterance, or to designate it as occupying turn 5 in the collaborative
model; regardless, the interpreters continuation of her turn, in lines 388 and 389,
can be said to occupy either turn 4 (if the patients utterance is not counted as a
turn) or turn 6 (if the patients utterance is considered a turn, however truncated).
The patients response, in line 390, occupies the position of turn 5, again because the
interpreter does not interpret the utterance (which she could easily have done), but
rather replies directly to it. Her contribution, in lines 391 and 392, occupies turn 6 in
1293
the model. The next series of turns represents a rather extended dialogue between
the patient and the interpreter regarding the exact nature of the physicians instructions, without, however, any input from (or feedback to) the physician himself.
What happens during this exchange, at line 396, is itself quite interesting, representing, as it does, a rupture in the linguistic barrier between the patient and the
physician, but one which does nothing to further the goals of the discourse itself.
The physician, who speaks a very small amount of basic Spanish (limited primarily
to fossilized lexical items, e.g. buenos das, etc.), appears to have read, from the
patients use of okay in line 395, that his message has been conveyed by the
interpreter to the patient, assimilated by the patient, and understood; the physician
says, in Spanish, En la noche, At night, and then adds his own use of the bivalent
Okay. It is not okay, however, because the patient is still unclear as to which
medication the new schedule applies (both medications, or just the one?), and the
interpreter knows this; she jumps in, in lines 397399, to correct the patient, and
also, perhaps, the physicians wrongly-held assumption about what the patient has
understood of the interpreters report.No, like okay, is bivalent; it functions
both to tell the patient that he is wrong in his assumption about the new medication
schedule, and the physician that he is wrong about his understanding of the patients
okay.
There is no position for the physicians turn in line 395 that is available in the
collaborative model, which assumes a perfect and reciprocal absence of knowledge
of the others language by both of the principal interlocutors. Notice that the physicians turn in line 396 is a departure from the collaborative model, in that the
physician skips over turn 10, the interpreters turn to report the patients last utterance. This turn is not only a departure from the model, it also demonstrates the
physicians inability to follow Spanish discourse to the degree necessary for uent
conversation; it also increases the patients possible confusion (the interpreter is
saying no, the physician is saying yes), and demonstrates the collaborative models
predictive ability still further, in that real-life departures from the hypothesized
model have predictable consequences for the course of the conversation.
The interpreters turn, in lines 397399, is not easily classiable, precisely because
it appears to be directed at both the patient and at the physician, and also because
there is no turn available in the model that occupies the position of a response to an
unsuccessful breach in the linguistic barrier. The patient and the interpreter go on to
engage in a continuing discourse about the new schedule for the patients medications, in lines 400, 401, 402 and 403. In the penultimate turn, line 402, the patient
demonstrates verbally that he has nally understood the exact nature of the physicians instructions. This turn could be said to occupy, again, either turn 5, or turn 7;
in the latter case, its content may be designated as B(). The interpreters next turn,
in line 403, could be said to represent either turn 8 or turn 10; what is most interesting about this turn is that it does not contain any of the semantic content of line
B(), only the bivalent armation okay, which the physician then takes to mean
that his contribution to the discourse has, nally, been achieved (i.e. the patient now
understands, through the interpreter, which medications to take when), although he
makes no attempt to determine if this is in fact the case. In other words, the inter-
1294
preter does not appear to feel the need to convey the patients nal contribution B,
and the physician apparently is satised with the interaction, even without learning
what (the interpreters version of) B might have been.
The examination of Excerpt 1 shows clearly, then, that the collaborative model of
interpreted discourse provides an adequate template into which actual turns in
naturally occurring interpreted discourse can be placed and analyzed. From this
perspective, we can view the transcribed data taken from the larger study of medical
interviews as concrete instantiations of the abstract model presented in this article,
as both a viable representation of how interpreted conversations progress, and also
as a valuable heuristic for analyzing the discourse processes at work within interpreted conversations.
The whole of Excerpt 1 is also illuminating in another way; it shows that the patterns of conversational engagement or interpretation displayed by the interpreter are
not random, but are rather systematic within the discourse. That is, we can not only
use the model to illuminate the types and functions of turns in interpreted discourses; another important aspect of the model is that it provides us with a tool with
which to examine exactly how the interpreter carries out her duties as linguistic
intermediary. In this case, she interprets for the physician in a straightforward,
almost deferential manner, and she works extensively with (in some cases against)
the patient to shape his contributions to the discourse. For interpreted medical
interviews specically, we have only looked at patterns of turns as they appear in the
discourse. Were we to match, for example, patterns of interruption, examining who
the interpreter interrupts and in what language (cf. Davidson 2000, 2001), we would
nd a similar pattern: the interpreter almost never interrupts the physician, and
interrupts the patient in a consistent manner.
We can then match these patterns of conversational engagement and interpretation to the social and contextual roles occupied by the conversational participants,
and from this determine how the interpreter goes about facilitating the achievement
of the conversational goals of the speech event (a very dierent task than merely
transmitting information). The nature of the interpreters role in discourse has
become a fertile study for studies of the exercise of power through conversational
interaction, because, as one observer noted, interpreters are always placed in this
contested arena between being providers of a service and being agents of authority
and control. (Candlin, in the introduction to Wadensjo (1998): xvii; italics in the
original). Wadensjo (1998: 6869) writes:
As do all professionalized intermediaries, interpreters work at providing a
particular service. Simultaneously, theyof necessityexercise a certain control. Obviously there is a potential conict between the service and the control
aspects, which sometimes surfaces in dilemmas reported in the literature on
institutional communication. (italics in the original)
For the form of institutional medical discourse we have been examining, the control aspects of the interpreters role are visible in the patterns of interpretation
highlighted by the turn-structures uncovered. The turns that were labeled
1295
optional in the presentation of the collaborative model of interpreted discourse do

not, in practice, work out to be randomly optional for interpreted medical interviews; the interpreter rarely engages the physician, and frequently engages in conversation with the patient.
This in turn underscores the patients role of patient (that is, recipient, or passive undergoer) within the clinic (Fisher and Todd, 1983; Foucault, 1973), and the
professional, hospital-based interpreters primary allegiance to the clinic and its
medical agenda. The interpreter does not work to evaluate the degree of the physicians comprehension, to see if the latter has understood the report of the patients
last utterance to a criterion sucient for present conversational purposes; this is
perhaps because the interpreter does not know what the patients conversational
purposes are, in the way that she does know, or assumes to know, the nature and
scope of the physicians conversational purposes (which are essentially dened by
clinical norms). Nor does the physician question the interpreters ability, or right, to
evaluate the patients state of knowledge and degree of understanding. This, in many
ways, is a direct result of the interpreters tacit mandate to keep the interview on
track and thus minimize the time spent in interpreted interviews. To do this, the
interpreter acts as a pre-lter, determining the relevance of the patients contributions to the discourse at hand, before they reach the physicians ears: in eect, the
interpreter is engaged in the process of preliminary diagnosis.
This is a very far remove from the role of a multilingual parrot. The interpreters role, not as facilitator of dialogue, but as the agent of the unequal ow of
information and medical evaluation, is exhibited in her systematic patterns of interpretation and conversation within the interpreted medical interview. In the market
of the hospital, the physicians power, to dene the conversational common ground
that will be worked on and added to, is carried, and reinforced, through the actions
of the interpreter (cf. Bourdieu, 1977; Waitzkin, 1991).
6. Implications of the action model of interpreting

One shortcoming of the collaborative model of conversational interpreting is that
it still does not demonstrate how the third aspect of collaborative discourse, Clarks
acknowledgment phase, is achieved; the participants in interpreted discourse have
been shown to both present new information, and to accept it (via the relevance of
their replies to the interpreter), but they have not actually heard a reply to their
utterance relevant enough to signal a true acknowledgment of their prior contribution.
However, we know that speakers need not be explicit in their acceptance of contributions. If, in a sequence such as that outlined in Fig. 3, all of the agents participating in the conversation understand, or feel they understand, each prior utterance
that is designed for them, then each move could take only one or two turns. For
example, in the case of a stretch of interpreted speech where no same-language
conversation takes place between the interpreter and the primary interlocutors,
Speaker 1 could contribute A(), the interpreter could contribute A0 (), Speaker 2
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could contribute B(), and the interpreter could contribute B0 (), and the discourse
could proceed just as laid out in Fig. 2. From here to achieve true conversational
reciprocity, however, Speaker 1 would need one turn to convey comprehension to
the interpreter (such as the turn taken by the physician in Excerpt 1, lines 377 and
378); the interpreter could convey this to Speaker 2; and Speaker 2, by the nature of
his reply, could both convey comprehension and begin a new contribution. In such a
case, only seven turns would be needed, and some of those turns, such as the last
turn taken by Speaker 2, would serve the purpose of both achieving a prior contribution and adding to a new one.
It is impossible, however, to predict when such a string of turns might take place,
and, even if it did, the underlying process would still be that represented by the collaborative model. More important, however, is the cumulative eect of divergent
views of exactly what has been contributed (Speaker 1s A, or Speaker 2s A00 ?).
One problem with interpreted discourse, then, is that the structural properties of a
cross-linguistic discourse make such conversations quite unwieldy; this aw is not
merely a representational quirk that nds no analog in naturally-occurring interpreted discourses. Often, turns in interpreted discourse do not follow an orderly
pattern where participants wait for turns to be taken in each language, to be then
conveyed by the interpreter. In my own experience and in the data set from which
Excerpt 1 is taken, in every single interpreted medical interview there were stretches
of talk, sometimes several minutes0 worth, where both the physician and the patient
would speak to the interpreter at the same time, in two languages, a situation in
which not even the most gifted of interpreters is able to function well. When this is
happening, there is virtually no way for the participants0 contributions to the discourse to be fully acknowledged, because they are not even being heard, and the
participants are not waiting to hear what the other has said. For this reason, the
optional turns in which the interpreter engages the primary interlocutors fulll
another crucial role: they allow the interpreter to act as a conversational trac
cop (cf. Roy, 1999), negotiating with the interlocutors so that they do not talk
simultaneously or out of turn.
Even when interpreted discourses do follow a reasonably well-structured format
of non-overlapping turns, as in Excerpt 1, interlocutors do not wait thirteen turns in
order to establish reciprocity, and then move on to their next contribution. New
contributions are added, by both principal participants in the discourse, before prior
contributions can be fully achieved. Interpreted conversations are dicult to conduct precisely because reciprocity is so dicult and time-consuming to accomplish,
and once it has been achieved, there is still no real guarantee that the common
ground is common enough to meet the speakers criteria.
A second implication of this model is that analyses that allow for a possible split
between the speech-generator and the contributions originator, like Hymes
spokesman and source, or Gomans animator and author, become theoretically dicult to sustain. This is not to say that the interpreter becomes confused, in the patients eyes, with the physician, or that the Kings Messenger is
necessarily confused with the King, but these analyses miss the point when it is said
that a person can be merely the voicebox for a message in a language he or she
1297
understands.8 Without comprehension, repetition is impossible. The exceptions to

this, the memorization of messages in languages one does not understand, do not
stand as counter-examples, because in these cases the linguistic message truly is a
product that is being passed through a sender. There is no way that the memorizer
could discuss the contents of the message, or change it meaningfully (except to
obliterate it), and it is certainly not possible for him or her to determine, as interpreters must do, if they have the message right, and if the person to whom they
convey the message has understood it in a way that meets the criterion sucient for
present purposes.
Speakers who understand the message they are conveying are not merely passing a
package from one speaker to the next. The package is transparent, and if they know
what they are saying, they can, and know they can, be held accountable for what
they have said. Messengers are killed, for the same reason that we will chastise
children for gratuitously (to our ears) reporting conversations that contained bad
words: at what point did reporting become repeating, and repeating become contributing anew?.
The second problem with the simplistic model of interpreting is that the production of interpreted discourse is not merely the act of innocent parroting. For the
interpreted parties, the split then becomes one, not of voicebox/animator, but of
whom one believes one is talking to. As we saw in Excerpt 1, the interpreter does not
passively serve as the vessel for the institutions that have hired her, but rather she
actively engages in the process of whatever task is being accomplished, be it religious
conversion (Rafael, 1993) or the business, medical and social, of the hospital clinic
(cf. Wadensjo, 1998).
7. Conclusion
In this article I have outlined a basic theory of conversation that stresses the collaborative nature of dialogue, both same-language and interpreted. A simple model
of interpreted discourse, based on certain assumptions and common analogies from
same-language discourse, was developed that was mapped directly onto a collaborative model of same-language discourse, but which did not treat the interpreter
as a true conversational participant. Upon analysis, this model, in which the interpreter occupies the position of overhearer rather than participant, in analogy to
the popular interpreter-as-voicebox theory of interpretation, was shown to be
faulty. A second, complex model of interpreted discourse was constructed, called the
collaborative model of interpreted discourse, which led to a structural analysis of the
functions of turns within interpreted discourse. Finally, the model was applied to
stretches of naturally-occurring interpreted discourse, which in turn showed the
viability of the model as a valid representation of interpreted conversation; I also
8
It should be noted, however, that patients frequently do regard professional interpreters as medical
experts, and physicians often treat family-member interpreters as full-edged representatives of the
patient.
1298
pointed out that interpreters act very dierently in medical interviews with regard to
the ways in which they transmit information from patient to physician and from
physician to patient. The collaborative model was also shown to be accurate, if
cumbersome, as a model for mimicking same-language discourse; in addition, it
establishes that the diculty in conducting conversations through an interpreter is
precisely the cumbersome process of constructing reciprocity in cross-linguistic discourse.
This chain of reasoning implies that participants in interpreted discourse can never
fully know what the other knows; can never, in fact, be sure that they know what the
conversation has even been about, because to be successfully constructed, such a
contextual frame requires the knowledge and support of all speaking parties. In
addition, the supposedly neutral stance of the interpreter within the discourse she
interprets was shown, through a detailed analysis of a stretch of interpreted medical
discourse, to be false; if such a neutral position is possible, it is hardly inevitable, and
perhaps, in institutional settings at least, not even likely.
The analysis of interpretation is, admittedly, based on the interpretation of one
form of institutional discourse, medical discourse, and of that form of discourse a
specic form in itself, that is, medical interviews (as opposed to, say, genetic
counseling sessions, or preoperative meetings). It is my hope that further research
will utilize the model presented in this article to examine other forms of interpreted
discourses, institutional or otherwise, to determine the role of interpreters in furthering (or hindering) the goals of the speech events within which they are working,
to analyze the primary interlocutors approach to the use of interpreters, and to
illuminate the underlying social and institutional frames that inform the ways these
speech events are conducted.
Acknowledgements
The author is intellectually indebted to the following people: Cliord Barnett,
Penelope Eckert, Jim Fox, William F. Hanks, Jacob Mey, John R. Rickford, Stuart
Tannock, Elizabeth Traugott, Keli Yerian, and four anonymous reviewers.
Responsibility for mistakes or oversights lies entirely with the author. This article
was written in part with the support of a Stanford University Fellowship in the
Department of Linguistics, and in part with a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics, the latter funded by the Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation.
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A Model For The Construction of Conversational Common Ground

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Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 12731300

A model for the construction of conversational

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B. Davidson / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 12731300

2. Background and data

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3. Conversational processes in same-language discourse

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4. A simple action model of interpreting discourse

It should be noted here that acceptance is not the same as agreement.

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Fig. 1. Graphic representation of turns-at-talk in same-language discourse.

Fig. 2. Turns-at-talk in interpreted discoursea basic model.

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mnemonic SPEAKING.3 That is to say, interpreters are mere producers of words,

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5. A complex action model of interpreting discourse

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Fig. 3. Turns-at-talk in interpreted discoursethe collaborative model.

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Are you taking an aspirin a day?

Comparing the turns-at-talk in Excerpt 1 to those outlined in Fig. 3 we nd two

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[Okay,] this is all that hes taAllright.

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Esa se-se la toma DOS.

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optional in the presentation of the collaborative model of interpreted discourse do

6. Implications of the action model of interpreting

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understands.8 Without comprehension, repetition is impossible. The exceptions to

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