A Study On Reported Speech In TV Interviews From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Reported speech flourishes not only in storytelling but also in literature as well as ininstitutional discourse, especially news reports and TV interviews. Previous studies mainlyfocus on verbs which signal reported speech, linguistic structures in which reporting verbsfunction and transformations among different types of reported speech, regardless of theinfluences of contextual factors. The data of previous studies are mainly drawn fromnarrative discourse contexts such as literature works. This paper takes the reported speechin Chinese TV interviews as its research object and manages to explore the featurespresented in actual communication and pragmatic functions, which contribute to helpingpeople get a better comprehension of reported speech and successfully apply them toachieve communicative intentions. Language use is constantly adjusted to the choicesmade in a dynamic process. The adaptability of language allows interlocutors to flexiblymake a choice among alternative options so as to meet the needs of communication. Basedon Adaptation Theory, a study on features and pragmatic functions of reported speech canreveal the truth that reported speech can be employed as a communicative strategy toachieve certain communicative purposes and intentions.The research in this thesis takes quantitative and qualitative analyses as the majormethods. The data are collected from10episodes in A Date with Luyu on Anhui TV fromthe year2010to2013, with a length of6.5hours, a total transcription of4312sentences,among which reported speech reaches1606and account for37%in the entire transcriptsentences. The themes of these transcriptions are selected from a wide range of topics. Theinvited guests, with different education backgrounds, are from different fields ofoccupation. The contents of these interviews are the extraordinary stories about the guestslives. Throughout the whole interview process, reported speech makes great contributionsto the success of the interview.Through analyzing the data, we find that the choice of reported speech is made in adynamic process and contextual factors are the key to this language choice. In order tomeet the needs of communication, interlocutors make a choice of reported speechaccording to factors in linguistic context and communicative context. And their reported speech presents certain linguistic features. Firstly, reporting verbs and reporting nouns arefrequently used to construct reported speech. Among1606sentences of reported speechwe have analyzed,79%sentences have this characteristic. Secondly, reported speech canbe made by switching between English and Chinese or between Mandarin and otherChinese dialects, which is conducive to promoting both communicative sides withdifferent cognition to reach a consensus. Thirdly, reported speech is employed to expressthoughts or ideas by converting personal pronouns, and the conversion of personalpronouns aims to reduce the pragmatic distance between interlocutors. As TV interviewsare conducted in the form of face-to-face conversation between the host and guest,reported speech has some characteristics of paralanguage. In the process of reporting, thereporting person uses silent paralanguages such as gestures, postures and facialexpressions to achieve certain purposes and intentions. Based on an adaptation to physicalcondition, the choice of silent paralanguage is made to better express the thoughts. Inaddition, the reporting person conveys thoughts or speeches by altering the pitch or tempoof reporting. It is these unique features showed in TV interviews that lead to pragmaticfunctions of reported speech: firstly, in order to conform to temporal and spatial factors inthe physical world, reported speech has experiential functions of enhancing topics,resolving doubts and obstructing adjacent pairs; secondly, in order to comply with culturalfactors in the social world, reported speech has interpersonal functions of serving asquestioning strategies and answering strategies, and constructing self-images; thirdly, inorder to adapt to emotions, desires and intentions in the mental world, reported speech hasemotional functions of creating a harmonious atmosphere, resolving conflicts, protectingoneself and regulating pragmatic distance.The contents and research methods of this study have certain innovations. As the dataof this research are mainly collected from Chinese TV interviews, the conclusions of thisstudy have some limitations too. If a comparison between these two corpuses collectedfrom daily lives in western and eastern cultures is made, the findings will be morescientific.