Television Interview Study Of Discourse

Television interview, as interactions between the interviewer and interviewee(s), performed on television, with television audience as the primary recipients of the talk, is an institutional interaction taken place between television professionals and guests invited by the broadcasting institutions. It is a genre of broadcast talk and has typical institutional features. Its institutional background forms the framework of its discourse construction and comprehension. Its mass-communication feature, based on interpersonal interactions, carries the social functions of strengthening personal, social and emotional communication, or providing knowledge, consultation and/or help to the public. Its question-and-answer interactions and its intention to recreate natural talk on the mass-media platform endow the discourse with a feature of artificial performances. Normally, the interview goes around a news event or the guest's experiences, or both. In the process, the interviewer, as a representative of the institution, usually has more power and control over the process of the interview, the choice of topics and turn distributions.As an institutional interaction taken place between a media professional and a lay person and performed for the audience, television interview is thus different from and yet retains the features of other institutional interactions or casual conversations, thus forms a unique structure of its own. Background information, the opening, the body and the closing are the four major parts of the interview. Background information prepares the audience for the upcoming interaction and helps to illustrate the topic for and arouse the interest of the audience during the interviewing process. The interview usually opens with the interviewer's monologue: introducing the interviewee, the topic and setting the tone for the upcoming interaction, thus lead to the body of the interview. It also closes under the guidance of the interviewer within the prescheduled time limit. Restricted discourse roles of interviewer and interviewee(s) and pre-allocated turn-type in the institutional context shape the form and the order of the talk to the question-and-answer pattern. However, the cooperation between interviewer and interviewee(s) also colors the interview with features of casual conversation, such as responsive acts and repetitions. The thematic structure and narrative structure, though restricted by this pattern, also enjoy a feature of their own in the institutional context. Compared with everyday conversation, the topics are introduced almost unilaterally by the interviewer. While the development of the topics acquires an escalated and/or juxtaposed structure, they are more integrated and united as a whole. As a pre-prepared narrative for the audience, the introduction and closing of the story takes up an important position, with the introduction bringing out the necessity of the narration, the closing stresses and highlights the meaning and value of the narrative in the particular context, and its contribution to the motif of the interview. In a word, the discourse structure of television interview is in line with its institutional context, and harmoniously embodied in the interaction. It is an organic combination of form and content, structure and function.Discourse roles materialize in the process of interaction and change with the progress of the interview, though restricted by the institutional framework. The institutional context endows the interviewer with more freedom in making choices of discourse roles. By choosing a role for himself/herself, he/she also puts the interviewee, even the audience, into a corresponding one. With the progress of the interview, the host/hostess takes up the roles of introducer at the opening, the guide in the ongoing interaction, and the evaluator or concluder at the closing. The interviewee(s), on the other hand, with their roles somewhat restricted by the interviewer and the institutional context, is usually the person being introduced at the opening, and receiver of the interviewers'words or evaluator at the closing. However, he\she may also take up the role of the propellent once the topic is launched, thus push the interaction forward with the information he/she provided. In a narrative discourse, however, the interviewee, while narrating his/her own story, becomes the major narrator, and thus enjoys more freedom or power in his narration. The studio audience, as participants and receiver of the talk, participate only by cooperating with the interviewer, sometimes the interviewee's requirements. The audience in front of the television, as the major target of the talk, though not participating in the talk directly, their being there itself claims great significance, and exerts influence to the direct participants. With the ongoing process of the interview, they mainly take up the role of the recipient at the opening and the closing of the interview, direct receiver, target receiver and participant of the talk in the ongoing interaction, and also multi-roles such as the listener, the viewer and the reader in the multi-media context.To ensure the interview on a smooth start,plain-sailing progress and a safe landing, the interviewer takes up the institutional role from the very beginning. While introducing the interviewee(s) and the topics, he/she purposely makes use of strategies in setting the tone, and creating an appropriate talking atmosphere for the interview, thus set the interview on a preset, yet instantly created easy and jolly, or/and more formal, serious tone. When the interview entered the question-and-answer stage, the interviewer applies a variety of strategies to lead the talk on a preset route. The interviewee(s), on the other hand, strategically selects and illustrates their views and stories to the audience. Due to their strategic choice of words and rhetoric devices, their sailing ship is accompanied by small and big waves, and of course enchanting scenery on their way, so that the audiences will be interested, delighted, excited, even unwittingly purified. When the ship is about to land and the talk is coming to its close, the interviewer will come to the fore or lead the interviewee to the fore to review and comment on the sceneries, the waves they had seen or created, thus while winding up their trip, leaves much food for thought for their audience.The unique institutional framework of television interview ensures it with a distinct feature in its discourse structure, its discourse roles, and strategies, which are both different from and in some way tinted with the color of everyday conversation and other institutional interactions. Modern mass media technology endows it with music, pictures, scripts, and stereo sound effects. Its mass media character puts the studio audience as well as the audience in front of the television into important discourse roles. While restricted by the unequal power relationship between the participants and the preset interview process, the interviewer and interviewee(s) also enjoy much freedom in their talk. Background music, background information make it easier for them to introduce or change topics. They can also take advantage of the rights empowered by their discourse roles, of the pre-prepared devices, of the consensus reached behind the stage between the participants, to adjust their strategies and their discourse roles, thus realize their discourse goals.