| The job interview has been said to be the most widely used selection tool forpersonnel selection. Ever since the1990s, study on how applicants perform in jobinterviews has attracted much attention of linguists, psychologists and sociologists. Mostof the empirical studies mainly focused on the following three aspects:(1) the traits andbehaviors of job applicants during the interview;(2) structure and strategy analysis of thejob interview from the perspective of conversational analysis (CA);(3) the interculturalperspective of job interview discourse. However, communicative intention (CI) discourseresearch under the TV job interview context has seldom been touched upon.This paper adopted socio-cognitive approach as the theoretical foundation andconversational analysis as the main analytic tool. Socio-coginive approach (SCA) topragmatics, founded by Istvan Kecskes (2010), took into account both the societal andindividual factors of communication including both cooperation and egocentrism.The objectives of this paper are:(1) to attempt to construct mental models of threeparties, namely the applicants, the host and the job recruiters, when bringing out theircommunicative intentions under TV job interview context;(2) to find out the patterns ofcommunicative intentions in each stage of the interview;(3) to analyze the conversationalstrategies of communicative intentions the interview participants employ in each stagefrom the perspective of socio-cognitive approach.The data in this study was collected from the famous TV job interview program OnlyYou of Tianjin TV Station. It was an authentic live job interview with a host and twelverecruiters from different fields of private companies. The data used in this study wascollected and coded under the principles of Conversational Analysis. The approximateduration of each interview is20minutes and the total duration of this study is over threehours. According to the classification by Bach and Harnish (1979), different kinds of communicative intentions were counted, classified and compiled. In the framework ofSCA, both cooperation level and egocentrism level have been discussed in the analysis ofthe discourse with the application of qualitative approach.The major findings are shown in three aspects:Firstly, the paper has found that the applicants were the relatively weak power partyin this institutional setting and the mental model of them is the Presentation Model. Theyfollowed the rules of the institutional conversation and cooperate with the host andrecruiters. Not only speech, but also the non-verbals can be taken as the strategy in orderto present themselves.Secondly, the host played several different roles in the process and the mental modelof the host is the Coordination Model. As the coordinator, he ensured that exchangedinformation between the applicants and recruiters was clear and precise. As the controller,the host made sure that he was the dominant power. He controlled the flow of conversationand smooths the process by means of supportive verbal feedbacks. Meanwhile, showingsome personalities was also one strategy for the host to embody the feature ofegocentrism.Thirdly, the recruiters had the most communicative intentions to carry out in theinterview and the mental model of them is the Integration Model. To transmit theprofessional knowledge was one strategy to show that they were the authorities in thisfield. The cognitive factors were far more detected in the process. They advertised theproducts, the company and themselves in the process of asking questions. Free advice andideas can be acquired in the process of asking questions, too.At last, the paper makes some conclusions on the major findings in this research,some limitations of the research and some suggestions for further study. |
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