On FTAs In TV Interview Program Under The Adaptation Theory

Politeness is the focus of the linguistic study in recent years. Brown and Levinson's face theory (1978) takes politeness as the wants of face, the public self-image that all rational adult members in society possess. In fact, almost all the verbal acts in communication are face-threatening, even in formal communicative context. Certainly, it is true of TV interview programs which receive great popularity in recent years. As an authoritative English interview program on CCTV 9, both the host and interviewees do perform both mitigated and strategic unmitigated face-threatening acts (FTAs) to achieve communicative goals in the process of interview. Despite it, little work has been done to account for such a phenomenon. From a rather new perspective, Verschueren's Adaptation Theory (AT) integrates cognitive, social and cultural elements into investigation, so it is invested with a strong explanatory power to illuminate linguistic choice not only linguistically but also strategically.The thesis mainly adopts a qualitative method in case analysis along with quantitative method in analyzing frequencies of pragmatic strategies concerning FTAs in Dialogue. First, through analyzing the frequencies of strategies concerning FTAs adopted by the host and the interviewees, it is found that mitigated strategies are mainly used by both sides to satisfy the wants of face and unmitigated strategies are occasionally used when the needs of efficiency in communication or other communicative purpose are prior to face needs. Second, it is concluded that mechanisms and motivations behind the choices of pragmatic strategies concerning FTAs in TV interview program lie in both the host's and the interviewees'dynamic adaptation to various communicative contextual correlates with great consciousness. The ingredients of communicative context include the language users, the mental world, the social world, and the physical world. Finally, it is testified that the AT is very practicable and effective in interpreting the polite and impolite phenomenon.