ADAPTIVE PSYCHOLINGUISTIC STRATEGIES IN MILITARY INTERPRETING

Abstract

Military interpreting is performed in environments characterized by extreme stress, operational urgency, and high cognitive and psychological demands. This article investigates the cognitive load faced by military interpreters operating in high-risk contexts and examines the adaptive psycholinguistic strategies that support interpreting performance under such conditions. Drawing on psycholinguistic theory, cognitive linguistics, and translation studies, the research employs an analytical methodology based on documented military interpreting cases, samples of military discourse, and findings from empirical research on cognitive load and stress-related language processing. The analysis reveals that extreme situational stressors – including threat, time pressure, environmental noise, fatigue, and ethical-emotional dissonance – significantly disrupt core cognitive processes such as attention control, working memory, semantic processing, and decision-making. In response, military interpreters activate a set of adaptive psycholinguistic strategies, including selective attention, automatized linguistic processing, strategic omission, cognitive chunking, emotional regulation, and rapid decision-making heuristics. While these strategies enable functional communication under pressure, they also increase susceptibility to error and pragmatic loss. The article argues that military interpreting should be conceptualized as a form of high-risk cognitive activity rather than solely linguistic mediation. The findings provide a foundation for developing methodological recommendations aimed at strengthening interpreter training, cognitive resilience, and operational reliability in extreme military environments.