Metadiscourse In English Tv Interviews

Metadiscourse,defined as"discourse about discourse",is a common linguistic phenomenon. It has been a heated subject in discourse analysis and language teaching since Harris first coined the term in 1959. In any form of language communication, two levels or planes of discourse are involved: the primary discourse level, which consists of propositions and referential meanings, and the metadiscourse level, which consists of propositional attitudes, textual meanings, and interpersonal meanings (Crismore, 1989).Generally speaking, TV Interviews is a form of interpersonal interaction presented to the audience via television, which is a combination of interpersonal interaction and mass media. The common form of TV Interviews is that some interviewees and audiences are invited to attend the discussion on a particular topic. It is obvious that metadiscourse exists and plays an important role in TV Interviews. However, most metadiscourse-based studies are oriented to classroom discourse, daily conversation, clinical discourse, etc., with few scholars paying much attention to workplace discourse, for example, TV Interviews.Based on Hyland's framework of metadiscourse, combined with relative theories in Text Linguistics, this thesis first discusses the distribution of metadiscourse in the twenty transcripts of English TV Interviews, then makes researches on the functions of metadiscourse in the data collected. It is found that there exists in the data collected Hyland's model of metadiscourse—interactive metadiscourse and interactional metadiscourse, with the former including transitions, frame markers, endophoric markers, evidentials and code glosses; the latter including hedges, boosters, attitude markers, self mentions and engagement markers. Among all the sub-categories of metadiscourse, it is found that there exists transitions the most in all the data, with 888 times at the frenquency of 24.67‰, then self mention the next, successively followed by engagement markers, boosters, frame markers, hedges, attitude markers, code glosses, evidentials, with endophoric markers the least. The distributional feature of metadiscourse in English TV Interviews is closely related to the distinguished textual features of English TV Interviews itself. It is further found that metadiscourse plays two main functions in the English TV Interviews: interactive function and interactional function. Interactive metadiscourse as transitions, frame markers, endophoric markers, evidentials and code glosses in English TV Interviews are able to build cohesion of the text and to express connections between ideas; while its counterpart, interactional metadiscourse as hedges, boosters, attitude markers, self mentions and engagement markers fulfill the interactional function—to help express attitudes and express speaker presence in the text.To sum up, this analysis has both theoretical significance and practical value. It can not only expand the knowledge and research of the nature of metadiscourse and English TV Interviews, but also put its research findings into language teaching so as to provide Interview text teaching valuable references and improve foreign language teaching and English learning.