Conversation Analysis Of Chinese Job Interviews And Exploration On Response Strategies

As is well known, job interviews are playing an increasingly important role in job applicants' effort in finding a job. Therefore, people are concerned about the importance of interviews, which not only provide an opportunity for the applicants to prove their competence but also help the company know more about the candidates as well. However, the conversation between the interviewer and the interviewee is dynamic and diverse. Different speech acts usually reveal different meanings and intentions.This study is an attempt to discuss the linguistic aspects of job interview and adopts a qualitative approach of discourse analysis to investigate the interpretation of speech acts of the interviewer's questions. Also, the paper makes a detailed analysis of the features and functions of the interview with examples. Through transcription of the records from twelve job interviews in the large companies, this study employs the Speech Act Theory, the theory of Conversational Implicature and theories of the Conversation Structure Analysis to analyze the interview transcripts and explores the response strategies for different types of interview questions.To begin with, the paper points out the status of the job interviews and discusses the significance and purpose of the present study, scope of the study as well as the structure of the thesis. Part Two reviews the previous studies on job interviews and researches on the importance of context and its function in oral communication are reviewed. Then a theoretical framework adopted in this thesis is mainly based on the Speech Act Theory, conversational implicature and theories of the conversation structure analysis which work together in the research of speech acts of different types of questions and the correspondent response strategies. Part Three mainly discusses the research design of the present study, data collection and data description, which are introduced to prepare for later analysis in the following parts. Because of the diversity and instability of the discourse in job interviews, the range of the interview transcripts is constrained to interviews which play a crucial role in a company's recruitment and multi-person interviews in the form of group discussion are also excluded, but individual talks in multi-person interviews (i.e. interviews consisted of several interviewers and one interviewee) are included. In the main body of the thesis, the paper analyzes the conversation in job interviews from aspects of turn and turn-taking patterns, interruption and self-repair in interactional conversation, the form of question and response structure and linguistic back channel items. The analysis is expounded through quoting examples of natural interview discourse and thus summarizes the basic linguistic feature of job interview discourse. Then in Part Five, through the analysis of the Speech Act Theory and the introduction of the structural components(G, IC, IR, IC/P&C) in interviews, the questions in job interviews are sorted into three types (ICQ, OSQ&CSQ). Besides, the distribution and the function of different types of questions are discussed by means of status-counting and exemplication. After the integration of the context in job interviews, the appropriate response strategies used in different types of interview questions by candidates are explored and suggested.The findings show that in the context of the job interviews, different types of questions distribute asymmetrically across the structural components and enact different speech acts. The different interpretation of the speech acts of these questions directly decides what response strategies interviewees will adopt. Based on the analysis of the transcripts collected, the paper concludes the employment of appropriate strategies with an awareness of the context and the structure of job interview. It also offers suggestions and implications for the applicants in job interviews as well as workers in charge of recruitment in companies, and emphasizes that good grasp of the basic characteristics in interview conversation and good interpretation of the speech acts of interviewer's questions are the key points to select suitable response strategies in interviews. As regards the answering tactics of the interview questions, especially the OSQs, is the standard for interviewers to distinguish various applicants and the road to the interviewee's success in interviews.Meanwhile, the paper also points out its limitations and directions for the future study. Concerning the theoretical and practical significance of the study of the interview discourse, the future study can be extended to such aspects as a comparative study of strategies in Chinese and English interviews.