A Comparative Study On The Turn-holding Strategies Used By The Host And The Guests In Ellen De Generes Show

The turn-taking management of conversations has drawn great attention among socio-linguists since the publication of the pioneering work in Conversation Analysis –A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation in 1974. However, smooth turn-taking operation, in most cases, is ensured by some technical strategies, which are called turn-taking strategies. Many researchers have conducted studies on the turn-holding strategies in daily conversations and semi-institutional conversations. TV Talk show programs, with talks as their backbones, have developed into several types, among which entertainment talk shows is an important type. Entertainment talk shows present a relaxed and easy atmosphere with the main purpose to entertain their audience. Like all the talk shows, talks in entertainment shows are typical semi-institutional conversations. Although many researchers studied the turn-holding strategies in talk show conversations, few were concerned with entertainment talk shows.Ellen DeGeneres Show is one of the most successful entertainment talk shows in America today. The present study, based on He Zhaoxiong‘s summary of turn-holding strategies(2000), compared the turn-holding strategies and their corresponding linguistic forms between the utterances of the host Ellen and those of her female guests. In the research, 34 interviewing videos between the host and the guests were selected for a combination of quantitative and qualitative study. All guests selected are white American female singers or actors aged between 30 and 50. The time of each interview varied from eight to twelve minutes. Software ESP-XP was used to help to acquire the captions and Chi-square test was adopted to analyze the results.The main findings can be summarized as follows:Firstly, as to the use of turn-holding strategies, the similarity and difference are listed as follows. In terms of similarity, both Ellen and the guests used utterance incompletors most(78.579% vs.79.958%) hesitation fillers less(13.641% vs.12.985%) and incompletion markers least(7.779% vs.7.057%). The difference was that the frequencies of hesitation fillers, utterance incompletors and incompletion markers in the guests‘ utterances have significantly exceeded those of the host.Secondly, the results for the linguistic forms of the three turn-holding strategies were varied.For the hesitation filler, the similarity was that both Ellen and the guests adopted hesitation fillers “uh”, “um”, “I mean” frequently. The differences are listed as follows. The hesitation filler “oh”, “you know” were used relatively frequently by the guests while Ellen seldom used them. “All right” was frequently adopted by Ellen, while it was not chosen at all by the guests. The hesitation filler “well” was also used more by the host Ellen.For the utterance incompletor, the similarity was that utterance incompletors “and”, “but”, “because”, “so” were used frequently by both the guests and Ellen. The differences were as follows. Firstly, the fifth utterance incompletor used by the guests was “like” while the fifth utterance incompletor used by Ellen was “or”. Secondly, the guests used more different utterance incompletors than the host Ellen did.As to the incompletion marker, the similarity was that “when” and “if” were the frequently used incompletion markers for both Ellen and the guests. The differences are listed as follows. Firstly, in terms of the type of incompletion markers, the guests involved more different incompletion markers for turn-holding. Secondly, except for “when” and “if”, Ellen also used several other time-related incompletion markers frequently, whereas the guests didn‘t.The author hopes that these findings could contribute to the studies of turn-holding strategies in TV talk shows and that it could benefit young hosts and EFL learners to some degree. At last, some suggestions for further research and the limitations of the current study were presented in the end of the thesis.