A Multimodal Interaction Analysis Of Conflict Talks In ABC’s Q&A

Multimodal interaction analysis, firstly proposed by Sigrid Norris, aims at providing a framework for the analysis of human interactive activities. This theory involves language,nonverbal behaviors and the material world, with more emphasis on nonverbal modes. She thinks that nonverbal modes are not subordinate to language. Instead, they also convey meanings. The conflict talk, where two or more speakers differ in opinions or views centering around a particular issue or an event, is common in daily life and TV political debate programs, in which a few prestigious people from various fields are invited to the talk show to make open dialogues and express their own opinions and the collision between two speakers or among more speakers is unavoidable. Compared with daily conflict talks, the conflict talk in political debate program is characterized by semi-institutional discourse. Up to now,domestic and foreign scholars have conducted different and relatively comprehensive studies on conflict talks. However, studies of conflict talks in political debate programs integrating conversation analysis and multimodal interaction analysis are less. Therefore, it is hoped that the present study can enrich the study of conflict talks in political debate TV programs based on both conversation analysis and multimodal interaction analysis.The purpose of the present thesis is to make an analysis of the manifestations and features of conflict talks in terms of intonation, gesture, posture and other nonverbal modes in political debate TV programs. In the present thesis, the author attempts to make a qualitative analysis of conflict talks in a political debate program. Some heated conversation episodes are extracted from Q&A as the research object. Verbal and nonverbal modes in these conversations are analyzed. Through the analysis in the thesis, the author finds that nonverbal modes play a very important role in conflict talks in this program. They can assist the speaker to argue strongly with language. Besides, among nonverbal modes, gestures occupy a primary position. Debaters employ more gestures than other nonverbal modes. In addition, on most occasions, it is the moderator who intervenes and terminates conflict talks.The present thesis is composed of five chapters. The first chapter is an introduction,including the research background, research purpose and research significance, research questions and the organization of the thesis. The second chapter presents the literature review,mainly including an overview of the domestic and foreign research about conflict talks and talk shows. The third chapter displays two theoretical bases for the thesis---conversation analysis and multimodal interaction analysis. The fourth chapter is the main body. In this chapter, a detailed analysis of the extracted conversations from three episodes in Q&A are made in light of Norris’ multimodal interaction analysis and Sacks’ conversation analysis.Specifically, main manifestations in three stages of conflict talks and debaters’ nonverbal movements are investigated as well. The last chapter is a concluding part in which the research findings, existent deficiencies and suggestions for future studies are summarized.