ABSTRACT
Why does intercultural communication often break down, and how do individuals manage intercultural communication issues? This chapter serves as a backdrop for the book, which examines these two questions with interpreting as a key site of investigation. Through the unique prisms of interpreters as intercultural communicators, the book specifically focuses on the causes behind communicative conflicts arising from intercultural interactions in various interpreting contexts, and the communicative strategies employed by professional interpreters. With power, context, and performativity as three key characteristics of intercultural communication in interpreting, the chapter explores the inter-relatedness of these three concepts at both macro-structural and micro-individual levels. Culture is performed by people with language as a key medium, and interpreters are centrally engaged in intercultural communication in day-to-day interactions. Within each communicative context lie power differentials, which are not limited to particular contextual situations, but extend to macro-societal dimensions. By focusing on how individuals respond to structures, the book illustrates what motivates individuals to make choices and how individual creativity can rebalance and recontextualise communicative fields governed by complex power relations.
