A Study Of Questioning In Chinese Talk Shows In Light Of The Adaptation Theory

These years have seen dramatic growing on the number of TV programs,among which talk shows become more and more popular for their abundant content,humorous language and changeable forms.It is found that the quality of talk shows is largely dependent upon the hosts' ability and skills of posing questions.Therefore,the present study focuses on the questioning process of hosts in talk shows and categorizes the questions both in grammatical view and pragmatic view.The selected corpus is Jin Xing Talk Show,one of the most famous and newest programs,which keeps the top one in the rating list recently.The host's sharp but skilled questions obviously contribute to the success.To analyze questioning,the specific language phenomenon,this study adopts Verschueren's Adaptation Theory as its theoretical foundation.According to Adaptation Theory,the process of language using is a procedure that the language users,driven by motives both inside and outside,make choices continuously.Thus,this study aims to find out the answers of these two research questions: 1.What types of questions does the host ask in Jin Xing Talk Show? 2.How is Adaptation Theory realized in the process of posing questions? To answer these two questions,the present study adopts both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze the classification of questions and the whole questioning process.After analyzing ten episodes of Jin Xing Talk Show,totally more than 43000 words which includes 424 pieces of questions,this study summaries 4 classifications in each of the grammatical view and pragmatic view as well as the proportion of each category.Besides,the analysis of collected data proves that adaptation is indeed used in the process of posing questions in TV talk shows.When the host raises questions,he/she should make choices for the questioning utterances continuously with negotiability,variability and adaptability involved.And in terms of adaptability,the present study finds that in TV talk shows,the hosts pose questions in specific contexts with the adaptation to the guests' physical world,such as time,space,physical appearances,and material conditions;social world,such as social status,privacy,personal experiences,and marital conditions;psychological world,such as character,emotion,and hosts' intensions.Finally the study also develops a theoretical model for questioning in TV talk shows under the Adaptation Theory with the consideration of the effect of physical,social and psychological factors on hosts' questioning process as well as the questions' adaptation to these factors.And that model may practically help hosts to evaluate their questioning process in order to make the programs more successful.