A Comparative Study Of Supportive Verbal Feedback In Chinese And English TV Interview Programs

This thesis reports a comparative study on the use of supportive verbal feedback (SVF) inChinese and English TV talk shows. Based on the modified classification of SVF proposed byClancy, the SVF in this study is divided into five categories: non-lexical supportive verbalfeedback, lexical supportive verbal feedback, repetition, sentence completion and thecombination of them. The data of this thesis comes from the transcription of20TV programsin Chinese and English TV talk shows. Among them, ten programs are from the Chinese TVtalk show Intimate Talk with Li Jing (Fei Chang Jing Ju Li) and another ten are from EnglishTV talk show The Ellen Degeneres Show. Qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis areapplied in this thesis to explore the following questions:(1) What are the similarities betweenChinese and English TV talk shows in SVF?(2) What are the differences between Chineseand English TV talk shows in SVF?(3) What factors cause the differences?The result shows that there exist both similarities and differences between Chinese andEnglish TV talk shows:(1) The overall amount of SVF used in Chinese TV talk shows isalmost twice of that in English TV talk shows in the same duration of TV program.(2) InChinese TV talk shows people tend to use more sentence completion than repetition, while inEnglish TV talk shows people tend to use more repetition than sentence completion.(3)Non-lexical supportive verbal feedback is the most frequently used form both in Chinese andEnglish TV talk shows, but the proportion is higher in Chinese TV talk shows than in EnglishTV talk shows. And lexical SVF is the second most frequently used form.(4) Most of theSVF in the two TV talk shows occur at Transition Relevance Places (TRPs), but theproportion in Chinese TV talk shows is24.2%higher than that in English TV talk shows. Thisshows that in Chinese TV talk shows people prefer to use SVF at TRPs.(5) Concerning thegender issue, the research finds that females are more likely to use non-lexical SVF than males and cultural differences play a significant role on the different use of SVF in Chineseand English TV talk shows.The significance of this study is as follows. Firstly, the thesis provides a new way forresearching SVF and TV talk shows. Secondly, the research of the conversation in TV talkshows can help English learners with the study of daily conversation. Thirdly, it has somecultural implications which can help people from different cultural background betterunderstand and correctly use the SVF in cross-cultural communication.