The News Interview

This thesis investigates the features of English news interview in Chinese context by applying the conversation analysis as the tool. The aim of this study is to expound how this panel discussion (or institutional-talk) forms its unique genre in structure and content.Interested in the framework and content of institutional talk in news setting, western scholars have been exploring this field for years. In contrast to those detailed analyses in western societies, news interview in Chinese context has attracted little attention. Thus the researcher of this thesis wants to make contribution by studying the news interview in Chinese context from the perspective of CA approach. Audio recordings of 12 additions of 'Dialogue' (altogether 360-minute-long data) were collected from www.cctv.com, and were transcribed to answer this key question: What kind of distinctive structure does news interview have in its framework which makes it different from natural conversation?The analysis concludes that like the similar program in western societies, 'Dialogue' differentiates itself from natural conversation in the following two aspects: its macro-construction and micro-construction.In the collected data the researcher has also found an interesting linguistic phenomenon: when encountering disagreements, Chinese and foreign interviewees choose different ways to express their opinions. However, it is expected that in later research further studies should be done on questions like whether this phenomenon has its regularity in news interview and what causes these differences.The thesis concludes with the implication of the present study that the analysis of the news interview also has its pedagogical significance in developing English-learners' oral competence.