A Systemic Functional Approach To The Initiating Moves Of The Hosts In Chinese Talk Shows

TV talk show is a live program under the guidance of the host to talk about some hot topic in the form of interview, discussion or narration. It can be divided into three types in the form of interview, discussion and conversation. This dissertation focuses on the discussion type and takes Tell It As It Is as the analysis text. A host is the soul of a talk show, functioning introducing a topic, allocating the turns, controlling the whole situation and guiding the guests' talk. Although he is not the major talker in the talk show, and his talk is not the main part in the talk show, almost all the initiating acts are started by the host. Thus to analyze the hosts' initiating moves is very important to the analysis of the hosts speech in talk show.Every program of talk show is a whole text, is an example of language exchange in a particular context. Some linguists hold that context analysis is on the semantic grammatical basis of a context, and the three meta-function of systemic-grammatical grammar provide it a systematic and effective way. Besides, according to the register theory, context is motivated by a particular situation, and chosen from a whole functions, thus the main purpose of systemic-function approach to the hosts' initiating moves is to point out how they are chosen from the system and why they have their particular linguistic features and functions.The dissertation collects 10 texts of a well-known CCTV talk show Tell It As It Is , and conducts a quantative analysis from the angle of process, mood, theme-rheme, and then concludes the linguistic features of the hosts' initiating moves based on the analysis of these data. A further research is conducted through register theory, to discuss the relation between the linguistic features and contexts.