A Genre-Analysis Approach To The Openings And Closings Of English Television Talk Programs

Genre analysis has recently been widely applied in various disciplines. With the development of the discourse analysis, research into it has shifted from description of discourse on the surface level to interpretation of macrostructure and communicative function on the deep level. At the same time, the extension of the genre has been greatly expanded, which has not been only confined to literature but expanded to other types of discourse. Genre analysis "not only reveals the utilizable form-function correlation but also contributes significantly to our understanding of the cognitive structuring of information in specific areas of language"(Swales, 1991). It is an effective approach to discourse analysis and a useful one in second language acquisition. However, investigations on the openings and closings of English TV talk programs from the perspective of genre are rarely found. Extending genre analysis method, the author has conducted genre analysis of sixty openings and closings of TV talk programs broadcast on CNN. NBC and CBS. The research has been carried out from two aspects: 1) explore the way of linguistic realization of the cognitive structure and the communicative goal of the openings and closings of the TV talk programs; 2) describle the generic structures of the genre in question.The results show that all the openings and closings of English TV talk programs in the corpus as a genre tend to have a generic structure of two moves with different steps. The stylistic features of the corpus have made this particular genre of casual and oral features, and the degree of formality of the linguistic features are variable with the communicative functions of the genre.The author hopes that the study can not only render host(s) practical help to present the programs, but also help students familiarize themselves with the macrostructure of discourse so that they may speak appropriate English in institutional settings.