An Analysis Of Turn-taking In English Top Talk-in The Framework Of Relevance Theory

In conversations, people usually speak to others in turns to express theirthoughts, their ideas. Turn-taking as a common phenomenon in conversation is one ofthe most core section in conversation analyses that linguists pay much attention to. Inrecent years, many linguists, scholars of sociolinguistics and even anthropologistshave made further studies on turn–taking in many different aspects. Some of theresearchers mainly focus on the structure of turn-taking in various discourses, such asclassroom conversations, business conferences and so on. Some researchers pay muchattention to the phenomenon from a sociological or linguistic perspective. Theyseldom consider the cognitive context and even ignore the contextual effects in theprocess of turn-taking.This thesis mainly deals with turn-taking from the perspective that manyresearchers overlook. Based on relevance theory, the author endeavors to find out howturn-taking is carried out smoothly in the framework of relevance theory. The wholethesis includes the following five chapters. Chapter One is the introduction, whichincludes the background and purpose of the study. Chapter Two is literature review,which includes the studies made by former scholars on turn-taking. Chatper Three isthe introduction of theoretical framework and methodology in the thesis. Chapter Fouris the analysis of the data based on relevance theory. Chapter Five is the conclusion.The methodology of the thesis is theoretical analysis. The data used for analysisare collected from English interviews of world famous TV programs. Four books and videos downloaded from the internet about top talk are of great help in the process ofdata collection. From the analysis, the author intends to find out the specialcharacteristics of turn-taking in English top talk. The author also tries to explore howrelevance is realized and how mutual knowledge plays the great role in turn-takingprocess. Through the analysis of turn-taking in English top talk, the thesis providesmore information about the present study of turn-taking. It also provides certainrecommendations in the process of communication for English interviews.