Simultaneous Interpreting as a form of speech under cognitive load: effects on prosody, syntax and discourse structure

Christodoulides, George
(2016) 8th European Society for Translation Congress. Special Panel: Methodologies for researching interpreting as an extreme case of language processing — Location: Aarhus, Denmark (15.September.2016)

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  • Christodoulides, Georgeorcid-logoUCLouvain
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Abstract
We present a study on the particular prosodic profile (Christodoulides 2013) and prosodic-syntactic interface (Christodoulides & Lenglet 2014) of French speech produced during simultaneous conference interpreting, and compare these findings with more general observations on speech produced under cognitive load (e.g. Yap 2012; Petrone et al. 2011). Our analysis is based on a corpus study, and four controlled experiments: (1) speech production under working memory tasks of increasing complexity (cf. Yap 2012); (2) reading comprehension and question-answering under increasing levels of cognitive load; (3) language production and comprehension in a dual-task environment (driving simulation, cf. Demberg et al 2013) and (4) simultaneous interpreting of the same original speech by a professional interpreting under two conditions. In experiments 1-3 we have combined high-quality recordings with synchronised eye-tracking data (using the portable Pupil system, Kassner & Patera 2012). We analyse the dynamics of prosodic and syntactical features of the speech produced, in correlation with the tasks. It has been shown that cognitive load, in the form of increased demands placed on working memory subsystems, affects pause duration and distribution, articulation rate and disfluencies, as well as phonetic and prosodic features. We focus on phenomena observed across different tasks, describing the specific profile of the interpreter’s speech as a form of speech under cognitive load. We also discuss the methodological aspects inherent in such research that combines elements from interpreting studies, psycholinguistics and prosody.
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Christodoulides, G. (2016). Simultaneous Interpreting as a form of speech under cognitive load: effects on prosody, syntax and discourse structure. 8th European Society for Translation Congress. Special Panel: Methodologies for researching interpreting as an extreme case of language processing, Aarhus, Denmark. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/182702