Watching Tv Talk Shows, From The Session Structure Analysis

TV talk show is a popular entertainment program nowadays in China, which is also a particular conversation type. Using theory of Conversation Analysis proposed by American socialists Harvey Sacks,Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson the present thesis attempts to prove the conversational structure of TV talk show, which should be the conversational rules that a successful talk show should observe in its production.A successful TV talk show has certain characteristics in its global structure and local structure.The global structure is clear-cut: each show has to have an obvious opening, body and closing. The opening part includes two components: the background introduction and exchange of greetings between the host and the guest; the body part has a logical clue running through the whole program and the complete closing part includes three components: the closing sequence,the pre-closing sequence and the topic-bounding sequence; the closing part should transmit naturally from the body part.In the local structure, the body of a TV talk show is consisted of turns between the host and the guest. It mainly takes the form of"question-answer". And it can have several subordinate themes that support the main theme. The host plays the leading role in the show: controlling the development of the show, leading the guest to talk, allotting the turns appropriately, getting the turns and re-allotting the turns in time by cutting in and interrupting, making some necessary repairs and repeats and gives timely feedback to the guest's speech.