Analysis Of Chinese Job Interview Based Onthe Principle Of Goal-direction

Conversation analysis is to analyze the language in use. It not only explores the language form, but also studies the language function (Brown & Yule 2000). Based on transcription of the video from fourteen authentic interviews, this study employs the Principle of Goal-direction to analyze the interview transcript to explore the linguistic features of Chinese job interview, and proposed some questioning strategies for the interviewers and response strategies for the interviewees. The applicability of the Principle of Goal-direction in job interview discourse analysis is proved as well.As a pragmatic theory, the Principle of Goal-direction studies discourse from a new perspective. Generally speaking, no matter what one speaks or does, it is to achieve a goal. Whether a goal can be achieved or not depends largely on the successful employment of language. As an institute interaction, job interview carries certain tasks driven by the speakers'goals. The conversation between the interviewer and the interviewee is dynamic and diverse. Certain goals are implied in the employment of different utterance. For the interviewer, efficient question raising enables him or her to choose the best candidate with the least efforts; while the interviewee may adopt certain response strategies to present the best of oneself.To begin with, the thesis gives a brief introduction to the research background, the research aim, method, and data collection as well. Part two focuses on an overview of the previous study of interview both abroad and at home. It is discovered that most of the study abroad are conducted form such perspectives as communication, sociolinguistics, and conversation analysis; while the previous study on interview in China has been made mainly from three approaches:pragmatics, critical discourse analysis and conversation analysis. Among them, only a handful of research mentioned the importance of goal analysis in interview discourse analysis. Part three presents the theoretic framework by introducing a new research perspective—the Principle of Goal-direction since job interview is strongly goal-directed.In the main body of the thesis, following the Goal-direction discourse analysis model, the paper studies interview from six perspectives based on illustration of examples from the data:the influence of goal relation on interaction structure, the goal system organization pattern, goal connection and discourse cohesion, goal and language strategies, status and power implied in goal pursuing and language reasons to goal realization outcome. Based on the analysis, questioning strategies and responding strategies are respectively given to the interviewers and interviewees.In the last part, the author first summarized the thesis with the following findings: interaction structure changes as the goal relation of the interviewer and interviewee changes; the interviewer organizes the utterance differently according to his goal system pattern; the connection of goals decide the degree of interview discourse cohesion; both interviewers and interviewees adopt certain language strategies in realizing their goals; the interviewer has higher status and bigger power than the interviewee based on the imbalance of initiation, strategies adopted and different speaking tone; language accounts for a big part in the success of an interview. Then the application as well as the limitation of the present study is also included in this part.The thesis not only manifests the goal-directedness of Chinese job interview, but it also justifies the applicability of the Principle of Goal-direction in interview discourse analysis. It proved the necessity of goal analysis in conversation analysis. Above all, it enriches the study of job interview by bringing forward a new theoretical perspective. Concerning both the theoretical and practical significance of the study of the interview discourse, the future research can be extended to such aspects as comparative study of language features and strategies in Chinese and English interviews.