A Pragmatic Comparative Study Of Successful And Unsuccessful Job Interviewees’ Language In You Are Hired

In recent years, job seekers are facing more and more severe employment situation,which has received great social attention, and various job-hunting TV variety shows graduallyemerge. Quite a few sociologists and linguists have embarked on job-hunting case analysis.Although there are all kinds of information on the test-taking and interview strategies teachingjob hunters how to apply for a job, job interview language should be still the one worthstudying. Many monograph books and journal articles analyze the job interview parameterfactors, mention the matters needing attention in the interview, and discuss the interviewresponse strategies as well as the interview preparation, clothing etiquette, mental state,asking and answering skills etc., but to a large extent, many of them are broad generalizations.Though some researchers begin to study the job interview language from the perspective ofpragmatics, only a few scholars explore the job interviewees’ language by making acomparative study of the pragmatic differences between the successful and unsuccessfulinterviewees. As is known to all, comparative analysis can be commonly used to identifysimilarities and differences of the data; through the comparative study, we can get a deepunderstanding of the data.Based on the theories of Script, Cooperative Principle, Politeness Principle,Conversational Analysis and Speech Act, this thesis, taking examples from job-hunting TVprogram You Are Hired, analyzes the successful and unsuccessful job interviewees’ discourseby means of samples analysis and data statistics analysis. The research attempts to discuss thepragmatic differences between the successful and unsuccessful job interviewees’language and make explanations for the mechanism of job interview discourse. The research results showthat the approach of verbal interaction in job interview in this thesis can be used to interpretthe job interview discourse. Compared with unsuccessful job interviewees, the successfulcandidates tend to present themselves via appropriate utterances by exploiting variouscommunicative strategies. Specifically, they are skillful in choosing the proper time to inserttheir sequences, observing the cooperative principle and adopting the politeness strategies. Inthis way, successful interviewees reach their communicative purposes and achieve job searchsuccess. Finally the thesis provides implications for job hunters to help them improve theirjob-hunting performance, achieve a satisfactory interview result and get the employmentopportunity. It is also hoped that this thesis can offer inspirations for researchers to furtherstudy the job interview language and widen the scope of application of pragmatic theories.