An Analysis On Psychological Experts’ Metadiscourse In CCTV Program "Psychological Interview" From The Perspective Of Rhetorical Persuasion Theory

Metadiscourse is a useful resource for writers’ or speakers’ expression of their views and stances,of their interaction with readers or hearers,as well as their trying to influence readers’ understanding of discourse.Much attention has been paid to the research of metadiscourse in written discourse,and recent studies have started to focus on spoken discourse,while little effort has been conducted to examine the persuasive functions of metadiscourse in spoken discourse.This study aims to investigate the use of psychological experts’ metadiscourse in CCTV program“Psychological Interview” and how these metadiscourse resources are used to help make their discourse persuasive.In this thesis,30 episodes of CCTV program “Psychological Interview” were selected as the data.On the basis of Hyland’s(2008)interpersonal model of discourse and Aristotle’s rhetorical persuasion theory,this study tries to answer two research questions:(1)What are the characteristics of different types of psychological experts’ metadiscourse in CCTV program “Psychological Interview” in terms of frequency and distribution?(2)How does psychological experts’ metadiscourse help to realize persuasive functions? With the help of ROST CM(Content Mining)6and Ant Conc 3.5.8,the frequency and distribution of different types of metadiscourse are presented.Specific examples are illustrated to show how subcategories of metadiscourse resources are used to achieve Aristotle’s three appeals of persuasion,i.e.,logos,ethos and pathos.The results show that,first of all,each subcategory of metadiscourse occurred in the data.Psychological experts tend to employ much more interactional metadiscourse to enhance the persuasive effects of their discourse.To be more specific,in the total metadiscourse resources,the frequency of boosters,transition markers,and engagement markers is much higher than others.In contrast,endophoric markers,evidentials and attitude markers are of little use.Secondly,as for the realization of three appeals of persuasion,it is found that psychological experts mainly focus on the realization of credible appeal by building a professional and trustworthy image with the use of boosters,hedges,self mention,evidentials,code glosses and attitude markers.In terms of rational appeal,transition markers,code glosses,frame markers and endophoric markers are helpful to enhance the coherence and logic of the discourse.Engagement markers,boosters,attitude markers,self mention and hedges are used to provoke the audience’s emotions and enhance the interaction with the audience,thus achieving affective appeal.The study reveals that metadiscourse can help psychological experts’ discourse be more reasonable and logical,thus realizing the three appeals of persuasion.The thesis is expected to enrich the studies of metadiscourse in spoken discourse and offer a new perspective of metadiscourse study,so as to promote the audience’s understanding of the discourse of psychological experts.