The Quest for Argumentative Equivalence

Argumentation in Context #18

by Emanuele Brambilla

What are the implications of strategic manoeuvring for the activity of the simultaneous interpreter? This is the main question addressed in The Quest for Argumentative Equivalence . Based on the analysis of a multilingual comparable corpus named ARGO, the book investigates political argumentation with an eye to its reformulation by interpreters. After reporting and discussing a series of case studies illustrating interpreters’ problems in the political context, the study reconstructs the prototypical argumentative patterns used by Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy and Hollande not only in a hermeneutical perspective, but also considering interpreters’ need to reproduce them into a foreign language. Situated at the intersection of Argumentation Theory and Interpreting Studies, the book provides a contribution to the descriptive study of political argumentation, highlighting the presence of interpreters as a key contextual variable in political communication and deepening the study of the interlinguistic and translational implications of the act of arguing.

254 pages, Hardcover

Published February 17, 2020