A Pragmatic Study Of FTAs In TV Talk Show Program Exemplified By Top Talk

Currently, the research on TV talk show is mainly conducted through two perspectives.One is from the linguistic approach, and the other is from the mass media approach, which isalso called the non-linguistic approach. And this thesis adopts the linguistic approach, whichis mainly from the pragmatic perspective.Within the theoretical framework of face theory and speech act theory, this thesis mainlyadopts a qualitative method in case analysis along with quantitative method in analyzing thenumber of times of face threats and the frequency of adopted redressive strategies and thefrequency of impositions. From the pragmatic perspective, this thesis is intended to answerthree questions:(1) What kinds of speech acts that threaten the face in Top Talk, and what isthe frequency of face threats from different perspectives?(2) What kinds of redressivestrategies used for mitigating FTAs, and what is the frequency?(3) How does the weightinessof FTA formula work in Top Talk? Of course, gender will also be taken into considerationwhen solving each question.Through the analysis, we have found that there are four speech acts that threaten the hostand the interviewee’s face inthe talk show, and the frequencyof the interviewee’s face threatsis higher than that of the host’s. So the host has the absolute power to control the conversation.As for redressive strategies, the host usually adopts negative politeness strategies, while theinterviewee is apt to use positive politeness strategies. In addition, the frequency ofimpositions the host does on each interviewee is proportional to that each interviewee does onthe host.