A Study On Preferred Response In English Interviews

Response, a constituent part of conversation, is one important research field in conversation analysis (CA). According to different contents and psychological functions, responses has been classified into preferred response (PR) and dispreferred response(Owen,1983; Pomerantz, 1984;Yu,2003.) Because of the difference in both culture backgrounds and spoken habits, PR in different languages varies.This research collects and analyzes English interviews with the aim to find the features of PR use of the native speakers and their connections with the success of conversation. Three questions are put forward for this research beforehand: 1) What are the existing forms of PR in the English native speakers'interviews? 2) What about the frequency of PR? 3) Are there some corresponding features of PR under different contexts (variables including topic, individual difference, etc)?The original research data are latest forty-five TV interviews from NBC, CNN, CBC and FOX. After being collected, it has been transcribed into written scripts by the author himself. Research is made on both qualitative and quantitative perspectives. On qualitative study, all PRs in the data are categorized according to the description given by Michael Stubbs (1983), so as to find their occurring features and rules. On quantitative study, comparative frequencies between different categories of PR are presented. Besides, forty-five interviews are also put into six classifications in terms of topic difference, so as to have a closer look of the features and rules governing PR use.The results indicate the following features of PR use in the interviews: 1) apart from verbal response, vocal response, as a type of PR, frequently occurs in interview; 2) among three categories of PR, the frequency of accept response exceeds that of acknowledge and endorse response by a large margin, and acknowledge response follows as the second; 3) In terms of research on different topics, the PR frequency of Entertainment classification takes the obvious top place, opposite to that of Official & Formal classification. For the above results, several reasons have been given to explain, namely, the phonetic and sentence structures of different PRs; topic differences; individual differences and contextual differences.This research suggests that the English learners and others who will speak English with the native speakers should acquire some skills in PR use so as to facilitate the conversation process in cross-cultural communications.