Abstract
This paper investigates two naturally occurring business interpreting situations where there are a number of participants. Unlike dialogue interpreting situations where there are only two primary interlocutors, the overall interaction shows more complexity in these multi-party situations. This, in turn, means that the interpreters’ functions and their level of involvement also become more multifaceted. In order to see the nature of the interpreters’ participation in the interaction, they will be analysed as a listener and speaker, drawing upon Goffman’s (1981) participation framework and Clark’s (1996) categorisation of listeners and speakers. The study shows that the interpreters not only participate in the communicative interaction in a highly complicated way, but that they are an integral part of the communicative interaction. This is particularly the case when they participate as a speaker
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