A Study Of Formulations In Career-planning Psychocounseling Discourse

As is know to all of us, language is what differentiates human beings from other animals. It is a precondition and a must for our social life. Without language, human life could not be imagined. It is universally agreed on that language is a reflection of human society. Traditionally, "communicating and transferring information" is regarded as the main function of language, but it is by no means the only one. As a matter of fact, language serves plenty of functions.Through decades' research of daily conversation, language researchers have found a lot of features in daily language, such as turn-taking system, cooperation principles, politeness principles, to name only a few. In the research, scholars also found all kinds of violations of those principles or rules. Therefore, they began to examine language from a new angle. Now, language has been regarded as action or process of society. The research focus has been transferred from daily conversation to institutional conversation. The most prominent feature of institutional interaction is goal-oriented. Through analysis of institutional interaction, researchers try to investigate the rule governing language use and reveal the goal hidden in the language.In this thesis, seven pieces of recordings collected in career-planning psychocounseling situation of universities are used as data. Formulations in the data are picked out. They are classified into three categories by the criteria of appearing positions—appearing in the way of interruption, appearing in the way of overlapping and appearing in the way of complete turn-exchange. Function is the first factor to be examined. There are two functions—to predict and to confirm/emphasize. Sentence pattern is the second factor to be examined. Declarative sentences and interrogative sentences are found. Structural feature is the third factor to be examined. Formal structures, interpersonal steps and propositional structures are analyzed. The interrelationship among the three factors is discussed then. Based on the analysis, asymmetry of distribution of the three factors is explored. The distribution of the three factors in the process of career-planning psychocounseling is not in balance. It shows an asymmetrical distribution. Not only dose this asymmetry show the social order in career-planning psychocounseling but also reveals the power relation of the two sides in career-planning psychocounseling. Psychotherapist plays a decisive role in the process of career-planning psychocounseling. Power is also obtained by psychotherapist.