A multidisciplinary theoretical and methodological framework for the study of telephone interpreting

The complex nature of remote interpreting (RI) demands a multidisciplinary approach. The focus of the present article falls on mapping RI and telephone interpreting (TI) in particular, in the light of the most relevant disciplines to suggest a coherent theoretical and methodologic framework. This approach will contribute to analysing the components and mechanics of this speech event, both for research purposes and for TI training. From the most general to the most fine-grained paradigms, the authors will discuss the relevance of four disciplines. The Ethnography of Communication will frame TI as a social activity. The sociology of Technologised Interaction will consider TI as the interaction between the social and the technical, where humans are constrained by the technical but also orient themselves towards technology-derived affordances. In addition, Conversation Analysis will focus on talk as interaction. The role of Prosody and Phonetics in interpreter´s positioning and agency and as a facilitator of coordination in turn-taking will also contribute to a comprehensive approach to the study and training of TI. All these analytical paradigms need to be factored in when studying TI to make RI trainees aware of the discursive linguistic and paralinguistic mechanics and of their potential to become effective technologised communicators. The paper will provide examples of how these four paradigms can be applied to the analysis of genuine telephone interpreting data.