General Interpreting Skill Development:

Refers to grammatical markers of participant roles in speech events. First person is the speaker’s reference to self; second person is the speaker’s reference to addressee(s), and third person is reference to others who are neither speaker nor addressee (Hatch, 1994).

A common error made by interpreters is the failure to identify referent shifts.

Refers to how languages show the relationship between space and the location of the participants in the discourse. In English, this distinction is realized in demonstratives (this versus that) or in adverbs (here versus there), or in phrases (in front, in back, at our place, out back). The ‘here’ versus ‘there’ distinctions also reflect social organization. Examples are “across the tracks,” “the other side of town,” and “moving uptown.”

Learning to locate yourself and objects in space that are not visible depends on at least three types of abilities:

• Cognitive (developing a ‘spatial map’ that includes familiar pathways in your environment and the relationship of these paths to those that are unknown)

• Interactive (taking account of the listener’s knowledge of these spatial relations)

• Linguistic (how these are mapped on language)

Refers to time relative to the time of speaking. Examples are now versus then, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Confusion occurs when units are not clearly indicated as being definite calendar times or definite in relation to the moment in which we are located.

Other temporal deixis functions include:

• Giving verisimilitude to our stories (i.e., Once upon a time…)

• When locating the time of an action precisely will give it more credibility (i.e., Saturday night, May 25at 6 PM someone knocked at the door)

• When a specific referent is not needed (i.e., remember when…)

Refers to keeping track of reference in the unfolding discourse. We use a variety of deictic markers to point the way to various parts of the discourse. The frequency of all deictic terms varies across types of text. The more formal the discourse, the more markers are needed to keep the text coherent.

Discourse deixis keeps the text connected on a textual level. It involves ways of tying segments of the text together through tie-backs and transition markers.

• Example: “Earlier in the Module we discussed three strategies you can use to improve your transcription samples. I want to refer back to the second strategy we discussed.”

• Example: “Now that we have completed our discussion of transcription strategies, I would like to shift to a discussion of transcription symbols. First, turn to page 21 of the Green Book and look at the standard symbols used to transcribe ASL.”

Used to code social relationships between speakers and addressee or audiences. Included in this category are honorifics, titles, vocatives and pronouns.

• Example: Your Honor, Mr. President, Madame Chairperson, my husband, teacher, preacher, you, your, etc.

• I, me
• You-singular, you-plural
• He/him, she/her
• It
• They/them
• We/us
• My audience

• Here, there
• This, that, these, those
• Above, below
• Went into, came into
• Yonder, over there

• Before
• After
• Then
• Now

• This
• That

• Only discussed designations in French and German that represent formal references to individuals and their status versus informal, conversational references