Overinformativeness In TV Interview: An Adaptation-based Approach

Language used in special situations, such as hospital, school,court and the like, is different from the one used in daily conversation. The discourse used in these special situations should be regarded as institutional discourse. Thornborrow believes that institutional discourse is the conversation that makes sure interlocutors'positions and limits some interlocutors to the usage of some discourses (qtd. in J.J.Wang 25).TV interview is one of the institutional discourses. In TV interview, the host and the honored guest present an ask-answer model.In addition, the honored guest always provides overinformativeness. In Chen Xinren's research, overinformativeness refers to "the act of providing propositional non-natural information apart from the supply of natural information in conversational exchanges" (Chen 132).However, Chen xinren's research focuses on daily conversation.The thesis will focus on overinformativeness in institutional discourses.With Verschueren's Adaptation Theory as the main theoretical framework, the thesis will study overinformativeness in TV interview and analyze its pragmatic motivation. The thesis will apply qualitative analysis to the research of a famous TV interview-Yang Lan One on One.The author maintains that overinformativeness in TV Interview is not static. In contrast, it is a dynamic process and realized by interlocutors'making choices to achieve their communicative goals and communicative needs on the basis of different kinds of contextual correlates.The research questions of this paper involve three aspects. Firstly, how does the adaptable mechanism function in overinformativeness of TV interview? The adaptable mechanism reflected in overinformativeness of TV interview will be shown as the adaptation to interlocutors'communicative needs, communicative goals and contextual correlates. The interlocutors in any discourse have their own communicative needs. Due to these different communicative needs, any discourse, including TV interview, will perform the state of being harmonious and contradictory. In TV interview which is institutional discourse, interlocutors have their clear communicative goals-transmit information to audience and show their excellent characteristics. Therefore, when conflicts happen in TV interview, interlocutors will clear up conflicts with some communicative strategies. Overinformatativeness is one of the communicative strategies. Contextual correlates mainly refer to interlocutors' physical worlds, social worlds and mental worlds. The host applies overinformativeness in his adaptation to the three worlds in order to achieve his inquiring goal.Meanwhile, the honored guests could construct sufficient speaking space to meet their communicative needs and realize their communicative goals by employing overinformativeness.Secondly, what are the functions of overinformativeness in TV interview? By analyzing the data, the functions can be generalized into two aspects.One is the effects on conversation and the other is the effects on interlocutors. To be specific, the effects on conversation mainly include the following:enhancing subjects, resolving conflicts, promoting turn-takings, postponing turn-takings and obstructing turn-takings. The effects on interlocutors include the following:constructing self-images, serving as answering strategies, showing addressers'attitudes, compensating unknown information and maintaining interpersonal relationship.Thirdly, what are the causations of overinformativeness in TV interview? The overinformativeness in TV interview is the interplay of conversational demands, conversational properties, interlocutors'communicative needs and communicative goals.The author expects to have a restricted view of overinformativeness by observing and analyzing the data and then to make a further study of it, i.e.,the applying of overinformativeness in TV interview reflects interlocutors' adaptation to their communicative goals. Moreover, the pragmatic analysis in the thesis can guide the interlocutors to employ the overinformativeness to achieve their communicative goals to some extent.