Analyzing The Job Interview In Terms Of Genre

Based upon the analytical framework of genre analysis put forward by Bhatia, the present research attempts to study the job interview in terms of genre analysis. The majority of the data are collected through recording the job interviews on the spot. The interviewees in these recordings are undergraduates and adults with work experience and the interviewers represent different companies located in Nanjing. The job interview is a face-to-face interaction between two parties, the interviewer and the interviewee having different communicative purposes. The interviewer wants to select the right candidate for a certain vacancy; and the interviewee wants to get a job using questions and answers as the way of achieving the purposes. The present research studies the job interview from the perspective of linguistics, sociology and psychology. Psycholinguistics pays more attention to the tactical aspects of genre construction. The psycholinguistic aspect of genre analysis reveals the cognitive structuring, typical of particular areas of enquiry, whereas the tactical aspect of genre description highlights the individual strategic choices made by the writer in order to execute his or her intention. These tactical choices are appropriately called strategies (Bhatia, 1993: 19). As a kind of genre analysis, the present research, in conformity with the two broad objectives of genre analysis, aims at exploring typical or conventional textual, psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic features of this very genre, and explaining why this genre has the above features by putting it in the social context in which it occurs. The present research has found that this genre has its unique interactional pattern which differs radically from that of ordinary conversation in terms of turn-taking system and topic control. Furthermore, in terms of psychology or sociology, this genre has its unique politeness strategies. Eventually, the social context in which the job interview occurs explains why the job interview has such features, which makes it a unique genre.