ABSTRACT
Within the discipline of translation and interpreting studies, a relatively recent development is the conceptualization of the object of investigation as socially situated activities and translators and interpreters as agents of not only linguistic and communicative mediation but also cultural and ideological mediation. The social turn, like the cultural turn before it, has successfully expanded the horizon of translation and interpreting studies from micro-analysis into words, sentences and texts to macro-analysis into the role of translators/interpreters and the function of translation and interpreting in society and culture. Discourse analysis in its various definitions and forms deals with language use above the sentence, meaning-making in whole texts in specific social and cultural contexts, the entire act of linguistic and cultural communication and the construction and representation of identity.
