La requête de répétition. Formes, fonctions et enjeux dans les interactions verbales avec interprète en situation didactique

This paper focuses on requests for repetition in interpreter-mediated interactions in a teaching/learning context. The analysis is based on a corpus of around twenty role-played interactions recorded during dialogue interpreting courses both with BA and MA students of French-Italian interpreting and concentrates on requests of repetitions performed by student-interpreters as metadiscoursal coordinative acts. Our study highlights the positions, forms and functions of the requests as well as the sequences they trigger, normally inviting a repetition on the part of the addressed recipient of what has been previously said. Our hypothesis is that, for both BA and MA students, requests for repetition fulfil functions which are closely related to their mastery of both the French language and the interactional dynamics of the (simulated) conversation. Their study thus provides a cue into the students’ achievement of interactional coordination dynamics – or lack thereof.