A Study On The Power Relation In Only You From The Perspective Of Turn-taking

A turn is the speaker’s continuous sayings in any time period. The silence before andafter the speaker’s speaking is the symbol. Turn taking is also called talking in turns. It is therole exchange between the speaker and the listener. As the key issue in conversation analysis,the turn-taking system has attracted much attention of the linguists from all over the world.With the participation and research development of many scholars, the application of theturn-taking system also develops gradually from conversation analysis to the reality TV showanalysis.The turn-taking system proposed by Sacks is the theoretical basis of this paper. Thepaper selects a popular TV program Only You and analyzes the process of the job-hunting byusing the qualitative and quantitative analysis to try to show the power relation among thethree parties from the perspective of the turn-taking system.Through the analysis of the data selected from the program, the results show thatbecause of the particularity of the TV program, the host controls the turn in process of thejob-hunting and the turns of the bosses and the interviewees were allocated by the host. Itreflects the dominant position of the host in the program; at the same time, it makes sure theprogram go smoothly. As for the aspect of turn-construction, turns of bosses are more thanthose of interviewees, whose turn length is longer than the bosses. As for the turn-allocation,the bosses also get the turn by self-selecting or allocate the turn to the interviewees after thehost allocated the turn. In terms of three turn-taking strategies, the bosses use theturn-claiming and turn-yielding more frequently, while the interviewees prefer to useturn-holding. The differences in the use of turn-taking between the three parties show thedisparity in position between them. The host is in the dominant position in the program, andthe bosses is the powerful side, who control the process of the program and give thecomments on the interviewee’s performance. The bosses have right to make decision of whether the interviewees can be chosen or not.The paper aims to reveal the power relations of the three participants in job-seekingreality shows. By analyzing the conversations between the participants, the research canenrich the relevant research development and can provide more guidance for the intervieweeson the job-hunting skills.