The Application Of Cooperative Principle In The Conversations Of Chinese And English TV Talk Shows

Nowadays, TV talk show, as a prevailing product of mass media, has attracted more and more people's attention. Not only scholars from mass media but also linguists take it as important research materials. It is a kind of program, in which host and guest communicate with each other on a certain topic or a certain person. Host's and guest's pragmatic strategies in the conversation directly influence the quality and the broadcast effect of the program.This paper, based on Gricean Cooperative Principle, discusses the pragmatic strategy in TV talk programs. In 1967, the famous American philosopher Herbert Paul Grice proposed the theory of Cooperative Principle and introduced four maxims:the maxim of quantity, the maxim of quality, the maxim of relation and the maxim of manner.The conversations in TV talk shows should observe the maxims of Cooperative Principle. And the study of Cooperative Principle cannot go on without context, which can be divided into linguistic context and non-linguistic context. However, TV talk show, as a special conversational form transmitting through media, has its own contextual characteristics. In order to make their language appropriate, besides linguistic context, such as the preceding and following text of the dialogue, both sides of the communication should consider the non-linguistic context, which includes situational context and cultural context. Therefore, host and guest are the main protagonists in the program and how to use Cooperative Principle to achieve their communicative intention largely depends on their understanding of the context.And this paper mainly discusses the application of Cooperative Principle with the restriction of situational and cultural context. There are many factors in situational context and the most important one in TV talk shows is the roles of the participants. Thus this paper mainly analyzes the application of Cooperative Principle according to the different requirements of their roles. As for host, if we take the content of a program as an integrated text, including the opening, development and closing of a topic, host must be the designer and should guide the guest and the audience to accomplish it together by using some pragmatic strategies. In TV talk shows, the opening is usually the introduction of the guest and the topic. And then host continues to guide them to further discuss it in the speech forms of questioning, interrupting and making comments. At the end of the program, host draws a conclusion. Besides, in TV talk shows, the hosting style is an important element in deciding whether the program can be successful or not. During the process of conversation, the audiences long for hosts could express complex emotions by using various ways and make their own language distinctive. While, as for guests, they are required to cooperate with the host by answering the questions. And there are various ways of responding to the same question, that is different pragmatic strategies, which could reflect guest's ability to deal with different questions. And in cultural context, this thesis mainly analyzes the application of Cooperative Principle with the restriction of cultural factors. In intercultural interview, host and guest take the conversational implicature generated by the application of Cooperative Principle as a frequently-used pragmatic strategy, thus the comparative study between different cultures could help participants in intercultural interview apply Cooperative Principle much more appropriately and understand the conversational implicature much more accurately.Therefore, the significance of this paper is to help audiences understand and appreciate the conversations in TV talk shows comprehensively and help language learners to improve their pragmatic ability.