An Analysis Of Interview Conversations In Project Runway From The Perspective Of Turn-Taking

Variety entertainment programs are sought after by the public in such a time with advanced development of communication information. As a kind of variety entertainment program, reality show is even more famous among the audience and highly appreciated by the audience. But at the same time, it attracts the attention of some scholars as well. A great number of scholars have done some researches on reality show, the researches were mainly from the point of view of dramatic, aesthetics, the interaction between the audience and player, structuralization and rhythm analysis, ethics of entertainment thinking, the psychology of the audience, narratology research, value criticism, communication aspect, morphology study, localization discussion and analysis and so on. Nevertheless, few researches analyze it from the aspect of linguistics, especially combine the reality show with turn-taking system.The research data this thesis chose is a reality show about costume designing, then the thesis combines it with the turn-taking system put forward by Sacks et al, analyzing the conversations during the interview period of each episode in the twelfth season with the two components and one set of rules in the turn-taking system, so as to find out what are the differences between unusual conversations in reality show and daily conversations from the perspective of turn-taking. The thesis also analyzes the turn-taking strategies used by the judges and the designers so as to compare the difference between them and points out the theoretical and practical significance of this thesis.The thesis includes an introduction, the main body and a conclusion, which in total three parts. The main contents of each part are as following:The first part is the introduction. A brief summary and conclusion of the research background is given, at the same time, the research design and the research significance of the thesis also be introduced.The second part is the main body of the thesis, which is divided into four chapters:Literature review makes up the first chapter, which includes two parts. In the first part, a brief introduction and conclusion is demonstrated in the definition of turn and turn-taking claimed by some famous scholars at home and abroad; an introduction to the two components and one set of rules of turn-taking system put forward by Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson, that is, the turn-construction component, turn-allocation component and turn-taking rules; and also the thesis introduces the turn-taking strategies briefly. While in the second part, an introduction to the reality show in board and the corpus of this thesis—the reality show Project Runway is given.In the second chapter, the first component of the turn-taking system:turn-construction components is primarily introduced. Sacks et al put forward that turn can be made up of a single word, a phrase, a sentence and so on, the viewpoint also be acknowledged by other scholars. The thesis classifies turn-construction component into word, phrase, clause, sentence and the combination of these units based on the previous researches. The thesis takes the conversations during the interview period of Project Runway as the corpus to do the research, and transliterates some conversations into written language with the transliteration system. First, the research uses quantitative method to collect the research data and to calculate the number and proportion of the word, the phrase, the clause, the sentence and the combination of the units in the turn-construction component of Project Runway respectively, demonstrating the results in the table and the figure. Later the thesis takes examples among the conversations for each type of turn-construction component, and by means of qualitative analysis to explain these examples and the concrete content of the turn-construction component. The ultimate goal is to analyze whether there are differences between the conversations in the period of interview in Project Runway and daily conversations in turn-construction component.In the third chapter, another component and the set of rules of turn-taking system: the turn-allocation component and the turn-taking rules are researched in detail. According to the turn-taking system put forward by Sacks et al, there are mainly two methods to realize turn-allocation:one is the current speaker’s nomination, the other one is the listener’s self-selection. Turn allocation can be realized smoothly because the participants of a conversation obey the turn-taking rules. There are two turn-taking rules, which are applied for different transision-relevance place respectively. On the basis of previous research, the thesis further lists some different demonstration forms or means for each turn allocation method, and for each method the thesis gives examples. The thesis still first takes conversations during the interview period of Project Runway into consideration, collecting and analyzing the detail data through quantitative method to compare whether there are difference between conversations during the interview period of the reality show and daily conversations in turn-allocation component and turn-taking rules. If there are differences, then what are the differences. After quantitative analysis the thesis takes examples of conversations between interviewers and interviewees, conversations between interviewers and interviewers, and then transliterates the conversations and further explains the examples by qualitative method.In the fourth chapter, the turn-taking strategies are introduced in detail. Some scholars at home and abroad have some disagreement on the classification of turn-taking strategies. According to the opinion of Sacks et al, turn taking strategies are divided into: turn-holding, turn-yielding, turn-claiming and feedback. And in each strategy the thesis further lists some sub-strategies with examples. This chapter takes the same analysis method with other chapters, that is, first collects the data showing in the table and the figure and gets the results, then transliterates the conversations and gives some examples. What is different from the above two chapters is that, though there is also a comparison between interview conversations and daily conversations, this chapter mainly compares and analyzes the different turn-taking strategies used by judges and designers. And then explains the reasons, which are related to the program form—reality show and the different roles of judges and designers.Conclusion is the last part. The previous statements are summarized and concluded, which contain the main findings of the research. What’s more, the thesis also points out the limitation of the research and further research orientation, the author hopes it will provide some guidance for future researches.