The Effect Of Gender Difference Of The Host On News Interview Conversation Mechanism

Since its appearance, the news interview program has enjoyed great popularity. Therefore it draws the attention of the linguists, and many researches have been done in the field from different perspectives. We wonder whether the gender difference will be reflected in the news interview conversation because gender is considered as an important factor in influencing people?s communicative behavior. With the previous study done, we come to realize that men and women belong to two different subcultures, adopting different strategies in communication. Because of the important role of the host in news interview, we come up with the research question for this paper: whether the gender difference of the host will influence the news interview conversation mechanism.The data for this research are from the dialogue program on CCTV9, which is broadcasted every evening from 19:30 to 20:00. We selected and recorded 10 editions of the program, 5 editions (150 minutes) for the male host and 5 editions (150 minutes) for the female host. In order to control the variables in the study, some criteria are abided by for the selection of these ten editions. That is there are two male guests in every program except the host. For the convenience of this study, videos are all transcribed into texts. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are used.In conclusion, the effect of gender difference of the host has not been reflected in the opening section and closing section of the news interview, because the structure and organization in these two sections is highly fixed. Yet in the Q&A section, the effect of the gender difference of the host is fully reflected. The male host?s news interview conforms more rigidly to the ideal way of conducting news interview, which gives the host the dominating power: 94% of its adjacent pairs are one question and one answer ; 99% of its turn exchanges take place with the rule of naming; the male host interrupts the guests sometimes(28%), but guests never interrupt the host and seldom interrupt each other(3%). Insertions and minimal responses from the listener to the speaker are few (5%,12%). Compared with the male host, the female host?s program has more one question and several answers pairs (11%) because she has less control over the new interview conversation; there are more turn exchanges with the rule of self-selecting (7%) because the female host gives more freedom to the guests; there are more interruptions from the guest to the host (7%) and between the guests (12%) because the female host has less power; the fact that there are more insertions and minimal responses in the female host program (37%, 90%) shows that the female pays more attention to the communicative environment. Therefore with this study we can see that the gender of the host is a crucial variable in influencing people's communicative behavior in news interview.