A Comparative Analysis Of Face, Face-Threatening Acts And Politeness Strategies Between The Ellen Degeneres Show And A Date With Luyu

Communication, as a universal and important social activity, has a significant meaning in daily life, and there are a wide variety of conversational forms. Under these different conversational forms people should concern about face of others and learn how to use politeness strategies. During the communication, Brown and Levinson’s Face Theory is an indispensible principle which includes the definition of face, face-threatening acts and politeness strategies. TV talk show belongs to the special conversational form. According to resources of CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure), predecessors have done many researches on interview conversations, but they mainly focused on cultural differences and there are few researches on it from the perspective of face theory. So in this paper, The Ellen DeGeneres Show and A Date with Luyu are chosen as source object to analyze the host and guest’s conversations based on Brown and Levinson’s Face Theory.In this paper, the conversations in TEDS and ADWL are analyzed under Brown and Levinson’s Face Theory. The contents mainly focus on four parts:(1) Comparative analysis of face in TEDS and ADWL. (2) Comparative analysis of face-threatening acts in TEDS and ADWL and find out the differences. (3) Comparative analysis of five politeness strategies in TEDS and ADWL and find out the differences. (4) Face-threateningacts to the third party.This paper has collected 20 videos containing interviews with politician, amusement stars and common people. These videos are transcribed into scripts. Tables and examples from the investigation of the scripts are used to analyze face-threatening acts and politeness strategies.According to the result of the research, there exist examples concerning positive and negative face in both shows. Behaviors of complaint and ridicule that have threatened positive face could not be found in ADWL. Among five politeness strategies proposed by Brown and Levinson, the strategies of bald on record, positive politeness and off-record are analyzed in this paper. It should be noticed that the strategy of bald on record could not find corresponding examples in ADWL. The phenomenon unexplained by the face theory is discussed as the face-threatening act to the third party.This paper does a specific analysis about TEDS and ADWL to prove the rationality of Brown and Levinson’s Face Theory and meanwhile it also points out the differences between the two shows. The research would help people to better understand the face theory and politeness strategies in order to avoid face-threatening acts in daily communication.