Conversation Analysis Of TV Talk Show Intimate Talk With Li Jing

As a new and promising member in the Chinese TV talk shows, Intimate Talk with LiJing has never been studied from linguistic perspective since its appearance. Therefore, thispaper takes the first attempt to investigate the conversational characteristics of this program onthe basis of conversation analysis. To be specific, the construction of this thesis is mainlybased on three research questions: first, how this program starts is to explore the regularitiesexhibited in the opening section; second, how the program develops is to reveal the sequentialorganization of the conversation between the host and the guest; third, how the program endsis to demonstrate the differences in the closing section between TV talk show and naturallyoccurringconversation.Technically, the theoretical framework adopted in this paper is threefold: the analysis ofthe opening and closing section of this talk show is supported by the opening and closingsystem proposed by Sack, Schegloff and Jefferson; as for the body section analysis, the threepartexchange theory proposed by Sinclair and Coulthard is adopted as the descriptive units.Besides, Amy Tsui's elaborations of the three-part exchange theory are also utilized to describethis program.Meanwhile, the paper combines both qualitative and quantitative method to analyze thecollected data. Specifically, thirty episodes of this program are respectively collected for theanalysis of opening and closing section, which belongs to the quantitative method forgeneralizing the regularities. With regard to qualitative method, it is used to make adescription of the conversational characteristics in the body part.Through careful observation and investigation, the author finds out the opening sectioncontains more than greeting-greeting adjacency pair and guest introduction, semanticcomponents such as program introduction, host invitation, guest welcome and gratitude are allindispensable in the opening section. For the body part, the conversation between the host andthe guest is developed under the framework of three-part exchange, namely, initiating move,responding move and optional follow-up move. The host primarily makes use of two types ofinitiating move, informative and elicitation, to encourage the guest to provide as muchinformation as possible, and uses directive in the form of requestive to sincerely invite theguest to give a performance. Most of the initiating moves are positively responded by the guest,while negative response and temporization are rare in their conversation due to the guest'sbeing cooperative. As for the optional follow-up move, its three subclasses of endorsement, concession and acknowledgement can all be spotted in the conversation, either to indicateunderstanding and agreement or to minimize the face-threatening effect. The results drawnfrom the analysis of the closing section is different from those proposed by Schegloff andSacks. The topic bounding sequence is frequently observed in the closing section of thisprogram, with the pre-closing sequence usually omitted. Moreover, the closing sequencefound in ordinary conversation is replaced by the expression of gratitude in the talk show.This paper pioneers to conduct an analysis on this novel object, which complements thefindings of previous researches on talk show discourse as well as sets lights on the futureinvestigations of Chinese TV talk shows.