A three-step process of description, reduction, and interpretation is employed in this paper in disentangling the complex of relationships involved in oral interpretation. In the description, contributions from various disciplines are synthesized; among the topics discussed are the communication process model usually employed in descriptions of oral interpretation, the difference between cybernetics and oral interpretation as a communicative process, and descriptions of oral interpretation as metonymy (part-to-whole relation) and metaphor (part-to-part/whole-to-whole relation). The definition of oral interpretation as performance of literature is exposed as inadequate, since literature is always already a performance. In the reduction step, the paper describes the multiplicity of messages in structuralist terminology as a paradigmatic/syntegmatic relation, identifies two organizations of possible relation as those of multifinality and equifinality, and redefines oral interpretation as "performing performance." In the third step, that of interpretation, the paper explores the implicit organization of the first two steps, explains how oral interpretation may be considered the paradigm for such theoretical positions as communication theory, phenomenology, and structuralism, and poses several questions of related disciplines. (GT)