Exploring Conversation Strategies In TV News Talk Show

The TV talk show is a typical TV program, which means that the interviewer will invite some relevant interviewees to discuss something in a harmonious atmosphere. As a general rule, TV talk show is a face-to-face interpersonal transmission manner, which is received by the general public via TV and other channels.At the same time, TV talk show is a special conversation tool. One of its prominent characteristics is the "semi-institutional nature" since it combines the characteristics of daily conversation and institutional discourse. During the TV talk show, on the one hand, the interviewer has to communicate with the interviewee in a proper manner; on the other hand, the interviewer has to take control of the whole conversation. Therefore, task assignment, role switching, topic control and so on take place between interviewers and interviewees frequently.This thesis is based on the fundamental theories in pragmatics, Austin’s Speech Act Theory, Grice’Cooperation Principle, Leech’s Politeness Principle as well as Professor Liao Meizhen’s Principle of Goal-orientation. It analyzes the conversation in the TV news talk show—News Probe so as to obtain the conversation strategies between the interviewer and the interviewee. This conclusion could improve the conversation competence for both program’s participants and audience.The first part of the thesis introduces the basic development of TV talk show, the objectives, methodology as well as the structure of the thesis. What follows is the literature review of TV talk show home and abroad. By analysis, the limitation for many researchers is that they only pay attention to the structure of the program, the styles of the interviewer and so on, as for the conversation strategies of both the interviewer and the interviewee which are throughout the whole program have been totally ignored by many scholars.With a view to conversation strategies in TV news talk show, the author of this thesis has made analyses among Speech Act Theory, Cooperation Principle, Politeness Principle and Principle of Goal-orientation which is proposed by Professor Liao Meizhen. After the comparative analysis, it is revealed that the goals for the interviewer and the interviewee in the TV news talk show are different. Hence the Principle of Goal-orientation has the widest use in this thesis.So the author analyzes the linguistic data under the framework of Principle of Goal-orientation in the following part. By differentiating the goals of the interviewer and the interviewee, the author of the thesis sets out to draw the conclusions of the conversation strategies in the TV interview programs.The last part of the thesis is devoted to the summation of the conversation strategies adopted by the interviewer and the interviewee in the TV news talk show as well as the creative contribution this thesis has made. Meanwhile, the limitation of the thesis would also be pointed out by the author for future further improvement and academic research.