Power Relation Study On The Apprentice In Terms Of Turn-taking Strategies

Reality TV show is a genre of television programming a competition/game shows,where a prize is given to the winner. Reality TV shows have enjoyed great popularity allaround the world nowadays and seized millions of viewers to watch. The Apprentice, a jobinterview reality TV program, has wrapped12seasons, in each season14elites fromAmerica, are chosen to compete for a$250,000job. The final competitors will becomeDonald Trump’s (a famous real estate developer) apprentice and work for TrumpOrganization.This thesis is from linguistic view based on turn-taking mechanism put forward bySacks, Schegloff and Jefferson to study the turn-taking strategies employed betweeninterviewers and interviewees in boardroom.This study has three main research questions: the first question is what thecharacteristic of turn-taking in the Apprentice is. The second question is if the differencesuse of turn-taking strategies between interviewers and interviewees are significant. Thethird question is why the differences occur, especially how power relation affects thedifferences. In this research both quantitative and qualitative methods are employed. SPSSsoftware and Excel are employed. Excel is used to calculate the frequencies of turn-takingstrategies used by interviewers and interviewees and the frequencies of question type putforward by interviewers to analyze how power relation influence the differences. With thehelp of SPSS15.0, Chi-square results clearly show whether the differences of turn-takingstrategies use between interviewers and interviewees significant or not.The research results show that in job interview reality TV show, the participantsmainly adopt turn-holding, turn-yielding and turn-claiming strategies. The frequencies ofthree turn-taking strategies are almost equal, which is different from other researches.Chi-square analysis shows that there are significant differences in turn-taking strategiesuse between interviewers and interviewees. Interviewers are inclined to use turn-claimingand turn-yielding strategies. Interviewees use turn-holding strategies more frequently.Power relation is a major factor influencing the differences.