A Study On Chinese TV News Interview Talk

This thesis, based on a thorough investigation of Chinese TV news interviews in line with the Conversation Analysis Approach, proposes that Chinese TV news interviews, guided by the Cooperative Principle, can achieve positive social effects.This hypothesis is attested to from three aspects: (1) The question-answer format turn-taking of TV news interviews, different from that of ordinary conversation, is aimed for positive social effects; (2) As a social media tool, TV news interview talk has its own target audience, and is required to create positive social effects; (3) Previous studies conclude that the interviewer takes a neutral stance towards the interviewee's utterances. But this thesis demonstrates that the interviewer violates the neutralistic stance in order to achieve positive social effects, either for benefits of the audience or for benefits of the interviewee. In each case, however, the non-neutralism is intended for positive social effects.Since the 1960s, the research on the conversation analysis has been broadened by linguists worldwide. Previous studies on TV news interview talk were based on the English language data. Moreover, there appear a lot of TV news interview talk programs in China nowadays. Usually, this kind of interview programs takes a one to one, face to face, question-answer format. Interviewees are celebrities, professional scholars, experts or specialists and so on. Based on the Chinese data, the thesis offers an analysis of the positive social effects conversation purpose in the institutional TV news interview talk.