A linguistic and translation research oriented approach to interpreter mediated dialogues in medical tourism

In this study, naturally occurring talk in mediated three party encounters in a semi-formal setting is audio/video-taped. Assuming that interpreting is the oral translation of spoken discourse, researchers should understand how important it is to deal with segmental and suprasegemental features of mundane talk together to get to know the dynamics of oral discourse. Studies into the organizational structure of monolingual environment may throw substantial light on encounters mediated by interpreters. A researcher who raises his/her awareness on unique features of unmediated talk will not find it challenging to transcribe the collected data into written form and thus enable other researchers to study it. An authentic 50 minute long corpus has been transcribed through the use of a set of conventions and in order to improve its readability, only the interactants' gaze patterns are selected from the non-verbal dimension. As for the verbal dimension, the thesis focuses on question/answer pairs because it seems quite impossible to keep a conversation going without asking questions. The Turkish language being one the two languages under study in the thesis, interrogative utterances in Turkish are classified in terms of their functions and it is sought to identify some tendencies in which interpreters as ratified participants handle utterances having an interrogative force. To this end, interpreters' non-verbal actions should accounted for in the analysis of verbal interaction. The conceptual tools offered by conversation analysis will help to explore the micro-analytical units of talk in progess. Through the combined investigation of two main units of analysis, i.e. interrogative utterances and gaze, it has been seen that interpreters position themselves as well as other interlocuters on a moment by moment basis and are involved in a mutual negotiation to co-construct meaning verbally and non verbally.