A Conversational Analytical Approach To Radio Consultation Converrsations

Drawing on the methodology of conversation analysis and based on the building of small size of corpus,this paper takes the overall structure of radio consultations as the research objective.Adopting the empirical,inductive and contrastive methods to take a comprehensive research on the overall structure of radio consultations,this study attempts to explore the real process and communicative details of the conversations between the hosts and callers.Finally,through the close scrutiny on the overall and local structure,we hope to more clearly learn the process,nature,characteristics and rules of radio consultations from the macro and micro aspects respectively.Through analysis it is found that the communicative process of the radio consultation can be divided into six stages: beginning,problem statement,inquiring,suggestions giving,callers' response and ending,on which basis the identification and positioning of each stage in the whole structure are discussed.The ways of conversational openings of radio consultations include the inquiry mode and go-ahead with no explicit words.The problem presentation stage is the most important in the overall structure of radio conversations,in which hosts acquire callers' information and the nature of their problem.In this crucial stage callers maintain certain degree of conversational power and choose the way of detailed telling or generalization to present their problem.In the inquiry stage of the overall structure of radio consultations,one of the prominent characteristics is the hosts' design of different types of questions,through which the hosts obtain the caller's information and collect data.Furthermore,it is found that different types of questions have different influence or limitations of on callers' responses.In the stages of suggestions giving and response,callers mainly adopt the positive and negative ways to react to the hosts' suggestions.Callers respond positively and actively to accept or reject hosts' advices,while their negative responses are mostly signs of rejection.Finally,the ways of ending stage are mainly hosts' mandate ending,procedural ending and ending in caller's gratitude.