The Description Of Dominance In Semi-institutional Discourse

Although TV talk shows become more and more popular in China, little research has been carried on the dominance in semi-institutional discourse, especially in Chinese context. In other words, most of previous studies are conducted by the analysis of daily conversation. In present study, on the basis of the previous classification of dimensions of dominance by Linell and Itakura respectively, and for the analysis of semi-institutional discourse, the author proposes a framework of analysis that treats dominance as a multi-dimensional construct with topical dominance and participatory dominance.The research questions to be addressed in this study are: (1) What are the dimensions of dominance in semi-institutional discourse? (2) What factors influence dominance in Chinese TV talk shows?To answer these two questions, data collected from " A Date With Lu Yu" are analyzed and three guests manifesting power and age hierarchy are chosen as the research subjects. It is found that the power and age hierarchy among the three guests can be reflected in topical dominance and participatory dominance realized by interruption and the guests and the host share the same participatory dominance realized by overlap. Li Ao, who is older and more famous than the host displays the most topical dominance compared with the other two guests. In the whole program, he occupies 11.36% of the total topical dominance. Meanwhile, Li interrupts Lu three times but Lu never interrupts Li and they overlap with each other once. While Yu Dan, who is about the same age with Lu and shares with the same profession with the host, possessing 6.45% of the total topical dominance, shows more topical dominance than Han Han but less than Li, and Lu and Yu interrupt each other twice but never overlap. Han Han, who is younger and less popular than the host, doesn't manifest topical dominance at all and he interrupts Lu only once while being interrupted by Lu 12 times. Moreover, they overlap with each other once. This shows Lu has strong participatory dominance over Han through interruption. The influence of power and age on topical dominance and participatory dominance realized by interruption is obvious, but this influence is not clear in participatory dominance realized by overlap, since the guests and the host share the same participatory dominance realized by overlap. The underlying power and age play key roles in the analysis of the dominance differences in Chinese TV talk shows.