Language Skills Of A Talk Show

Talk-show program, a good representation of the developments and changes of our society, has now come to be one of the most appealing parts in television and radio programs. It can also amuse the mass and make them understand the age they are in, moreover, it serves as a major medium for people to acquire knowledge and information. Therefore, it does deserve exploring. However, its research in the way of pragmatics, especially in psychology and logic sense, is nearly empty. We choose to research one typical talk show program-Tell As It Is. We believe it will be significant to improve a host's language skill and even better to his hosting art.This paper, drawing on part of Tell As It Is program's materials of recent years, with the application of some pragmatics theories such as context, conversational implication, presupposition, turn-talking, etc, comparing Cui Yongyuan's language skill and style with other hosts', tries to summarize the characteristics of Cui's perfect expert of talk -handling and his language style. They cover the introduction of national and new topic, appropriate questions, quick, refined, clever and exact feedbacks, the flexible exchange of roles, the good making of daily occasions, quality for truth's sake, and his neighbor-brother-like humor, and so on. It can not only provide meaningful hints to his fellow-hosts, but also contribute much to the research to our daily communicative language and its use.