Corpora, ideology, and interpreting

The typically qualitative (critical) discourse analysis has traditionally been applied to the under-explored issues of power and ideology enacted in interpreted discourse. Relatively recently, for a more representative, systematic, and objective analysis of interpreting data, large corpora and various corpus linguistics tools have been increasingly used to explore the nexus between ideology, discourse, and interpreting in a diverse range of sociopolitical and institutional settings. This chapter firstly contextualises the area and explains the interconnected relationships between ideology, discourse, power, interpreters, and interpreting. The chapter then discusses the obvious benefits of applying corpus linguistics approaches to the area, in conjunction with critical discourse analysis (CDA), as part of a broader trend towards mixed-methods interdisciplinary research and digital humanities. This is followed by a discussion of some of the major interpreting corpora established to date and some of the major corpus-based interpreting studies relating to ideology, power, and discourse. These point towards a geographical imbalance globally in adopting a corpus-based CDA approach. The author also suggests a range of research topics that can be usefully examined using such an approach. Lastly, two main ways of identifying and locating traces of ideology enacted in interpreting are discussed: (1) a more data-driven and bottom-up approach (e.g. focusing on the examination of frequent and thus statistically significant items generated by corpus linguistics software); and (2) a more top-down approach, taking its departure from preconceived and preselected linguistic categories and discursive devices that are likely to be ideologically salient and thus worth exploring, based on the experience of previous (CDA) studies (e.g. exploring personal pronouns, lexical repetition, emphasisers, modality, and metadiscourse markers). This chapter argues that one or both approaches might be needed in a research project, depending on the nature of the project and the specific research questions. Ideally, the more quantitative corpus-based analysis (e.g. featuring statistical analysis) can be usefully complemented by more manual and qualitative discourse analysis as a form of ‘triangulation’ to provide a more comprehensive and vivid picture of the (sometimes opaque and subtle) power and ideology at work in interpreting at different levels.