A Study On Repair In Chinese Mainland TV Talk Shows

The present study is an examination of repair in Chinese mainland TV talk show conversation. The author adopts Li Yue'e's (1996) framework of repair in English conversation as the original framework of repair to examine the framework with conversation in Chinese mainland TV talk shows and sum up the features of sequential organization of repair in them. What's more, in order to further discover and understand the features underlying repair in Chinese mainland TV talk shows, the author conducts a comparative study between conversation in talk shows and conversation in daily life, and meanwhile analyzes the reasons for the similarities and differences out of pragmatic, sociolinguistic, and contextual angles.At first, the present study classifies repair in Chinese mainland TV talk shows into two groups according to trouble sources: repair on problems of production and repair on problems of understanding. Then this study makes a careful investigation into the repair process of each sub-category and relevant linguistic features in terms of who and how to initiate repair, who and how to repair, and what is the repair outcome. . Based on categorization of repair and analysis of repair processes, this study shows that, basically, Li's framework of repair in English conversation can be used as a framework of repair in Chinese conversation and of course Chinese mainland TV talk show conversation.Since Li's framework is originally used for repair in English conversation among L2 learners, it goes without saying that its conversation features are distinguished from those of Chinese conversation. As such, the author slightly revises this framework for the purpose of the present study.This study discusses the issue of preference for self-repair initiated by Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks (SJS), and concludes that there are a lot of chances of self-repair on repair organization, but the problem of who repairs also depends on such contextual factors as who is able to repair and can do it in the right time.