Analysis Of Turn-taking In House Of Cards

Conversation analysis,as a subdiscipline of pragmatics,is of great value in academic research.Its core study point is to depict fundamental structure of conversation and analyze language use in social interaction of human beings.Turn is basic constitutional unit of conversation analysis,which can be formed by multi-level grammatical units,including words,phrases,clauses or sentences.Turns are embedded in a conversation in which as the speaking rights changing between the utterer and the hearer,turns are exchanged.This thesis takes turn-taking theory as its theoretical framework and the renowned political-themed American TV drama House of Cards as its linguistic material.Based on the drama,the building of turn components,the observance and violation of turn-taking rules and the application of non-linguistic interaction will be analyzed.Relevant motivations concerning social and psychological factors,such as power relation and adaptation to mental world,are to be discussed considering the use of turn-taking strategy in conversations.The main purposes of this thesis can be described as: recognizing turn-taking application in social interaction;identifying verbal and non-verbal information delivery;analyzing the employment of turn-claiming,holding,and yielding strategies by the communication participants who intend to achieve certain communication objectives.The thesis is composed of three parts as below.The first part is introduction.An overview on the thesis will be given,including theoretical background,the purpose and significance of the study,and the structure of the thesis.The second part is the main body of the thesis which is divided into three chapters that is as follows:Chapter I is literature review.In this chapter,relevant theories as the study basis in the thesis will be introduced.In the first place,the definition,study field and development of Conversation Analysis will be stated.Secondly,Turn-taking theory,as the main theoretical basis,will be introduced in an elaborate way.The thesis will present the turn-taking system in four aspects base on its development process.The gradual development and improvement of turn and turn-taking theory will be stated as the first aspect of the turn-taking system.The second aspect is the method of constituting language units in various levels.The third aspect is the expression of adjacency pairs in the turn-taking process,the recognition of transitional relevant places,and the abidance of turn-taking rules.The application of turn-taking strategies and its corresponding sub-strategies in communication will be presented as the last aspect of the turn-taking system.Chapter II is the analysis of this thesis.This chapter concentrates on the application of turn-taking in the House of Cards.As a start,the turn-constitution and turn-allocation components organized by various grammatical units in the drama will be presented.In the light of turn-taking rules,the thesis then analyzes certain observance and violation behaviors by communication participants.At last,the thesis selects examples of non-linguistic interaction in the drama concerning its political setting,such as eye contact and gestures.Meanwhile,the distinctive function and meaning of such communication method in the process of turn-taking will then be analyzed.Chapter III is the employment of turn-taking strategies by communication participants in House of Cards.In Chapter III,corresponding motivations of adopting turn-taking strategies and the influence of such behaviors in social interaction will be discussed from four perspectives.First is the willing of communication participants to state their opinions.Under the specific setting in the drama that is based on political life in the White House,Parties often fight for speaking rights intensively in order to be more powerful.Thus,turn-claiming strategy and turn-holding strategy are more frequently used in the process of contending for right of speech.Second is the inequality of power relation among parties in the communication.The right of taking turns can be varied in the light of different social status of communication participants.In the drama,higher-ranking officials tend to employ turn-claiming strategy and turn-holding strategy,while speakers with lower social status often use turn-taking strategy.The third type of motivation is caused by speakers’ intention of expressing their emotions.In social interaction,both the speaker and the listener have their own feelings that can be positive or negative.As the participant is in a negative mood,turn-yielding or turn-holding strategy is more frequently used.Adaptation to mental world is regarded as the fourth type of motivation.The technique of adaptation to mental world is a crucial social skill in the drama,considering its target-oriented social interaction and obscure language use in political-based setting.Motivation of this kind contains three specific techniques in this drama,including psychological manipulation,desire satisfaction,and information acquisition.The last part is conclusion that serves as a general statement of the thesis.In the light of review and application of main theories,major findings of the thesis will be displayed,and imperfections and innovations of the analysis will also be depicted.In the meantime,the thesis will point out limitations and vision a further study in this academic field.