Conversation Analysis Of Repetition In Talk Show

Most studies of repetition use written language as data. However, as a natural language phenomenon, repetition exists both in written language and spoken language. There is a lack of study of repetition based on spoken language, thus this thesis conducts a study on the phenomenon of repetition in talk show programs within the framework of conversation analysis.Natural conversation is not ruleless, and the conversation structure has an internal mechanism. Wherever communication takes place, the interaction has an underlying mechanism to coordinate the participants involved. As for talk show program, it is a talk-in-interaction program. The host and the guests sometimes have to apply some skills in order to ensure that the program goes on smoothly. It is found that the phenomenon of repetition is often used in talk show program. Thus it is significant to conduct a study on the phenomenon of repetition in talk show program. Based on the above consideration, the objectives of this thesis are:firstly, to explore the forms of repetition used in talk show program. Secondly, to analyze functions of repetition in different stages of talk show program.This thesis uses the theory of conversation analysis as its framework. Though many scholars have made contribution in the filed of conversation analysis. Harvey Sacks is undoubtedly the pioneer in the filed of conversation analysis. Harvey Sacks thought that people’s daily conversation is organized in certain rules and the task for researchers is to find out those rules which work in communicator’s mutual cooperation and exactly describe those rules. As for the process of conversation analysis, Have divides the process into four stages. The first stage is acquiring recorded videos or tapes of natural communication. The second stage is transcribing recorded videos or tapes. The third stage is analyzing selected extracts. The fourth stage is reporting the results of the research. According to these four stages, the data used in this thesis were extracted from ten episodes of an American show called The Ellen Show, broadcast from January2012to December2012. The ten episodes were downloaded from the internet and were chosen randomly. Each episode lasts for about forty minutes. Speeches in the ten episodes which employ the skill of repetition will be identified and transcribed into written texts for further study. Some non-verbal elements are also taken into consideration. The transcription is based on the transcript symbols by Hutchby and Wooffitt. Based on the transcribed data, the analysis is made within the framework of conversation analysis. In order to show how The Ellen Show uses the skill of repetition and which forms of them are preferred, this thesis makes an exploration of the classification of repetition at first. Then, this thesis will analyze functions of repetition in different stages of talk show program with rich examples.Both quantitative and qualitative approaches have been adopted in this thesis to study the repetition in the talk show program. The author divides the talk show program into three stages according to Li Yue’e’s thoughts, namely:expressive stage, comprehensive stage and interactive stage. The quantitative results of the present study show that there are altogether261repetitions in the selected ten episodes and among those repetitions,74,78and109repetitions are found in expressive stage, comprehensive stage and interactive stage respectively. Then qualitative study has been made to analyze the forms and functions of repetition in different stages of talk show program. According to the repeated objectives, repetition involved in talk show program can be divided into self-repetition and other-repetition. The former occurs more frequently in the expressive stage while the latter occurs more frequently in comprehensive stage and interactive stage; according to structural patterns, repetition can be divided into lexical repetition, syntactic repetition and discoursal repetition. Among them, syntactic repetition occurs most and can be found in all those three stages of talk show program. The host and the guests prefer to use syntactic repetition in talk show conversations.The results of this thesis have both theoretical significance as well as practical significance. As for theoretical significance, this thesis studies the forms and functions of repetition in talk show program from expressive stage, comprehensive stage and interactive stage of talk show program. Expression, comprehension and interaction are three basic activities of language use, thus studies of repetition from these three stages help people to get a more complete and exact understanding of the using regularity of repetition. Apart from this, this study adopts both quantitative and qualitative approach based on the method of conversation analysis. The method and results of this study can be also applied into studies of other kinds of discourse.The results of the present study have a practical significance in talk show program as well. It can help the host better arrange the talk show program such as controlling turns, selecting topics and so on. It also helps the guests make better cooperation with the host and helps the audience better understand and appreciate the conversations in talk show program.